Thump, thump, thump.
Louder now. She could hear a man grunting, a woman gasping. The sound of flesh slapping against flesh. No, no, it couldn’t be that. Not here. Not with shit spread all over the place. No human beings could be that vulgar, that crude, that low and bestial. But the sounds were getting louder and louder. There was no mistaking them. Despite herself, Susan felt a stirring inside her.
Looked in there.
A man and woman were screwing on the floor. The man was entirely naked, his body covered with scratches and dried bloodstains. The woman wore only a short skirt and this was pushed up around her hips. Another woman, older, was crouched by them, rocking back and forth in mimic of their motions, gnawing on an apple.
And beyond them…in fact, only a few feet away…the remains of the Nychek’s, Jack and Wendy. Her legs were missing. He’d been split open like a suckling pig, his abdomen wide open. His entrails bulged out, were heaped on the floor in a fleshy, coiling mass. Blood had spread out from the both of them in a sticky red pool. The couple were fucking in it, streaked with blood and shit, just happily going away at it.
Susan just stared, appalled and sickened.
In the back of her mind there was a memory. Some show on TV. Something about man’s modern world, his cities and technology, being like a cage that he had locked himself up in. The captivity repressed his natural instinctive desires, his animal impulses. In the cage, man no longer had to fear predators or hunt for food or defend his territory. Like a monkey in a zoo, he had no other instinctive outlet but sex. That’s why people were so obsessed by sex. Simply because all the other impulses nature had installed were repressed. All that remained was sex, sex, sex There were low voices in the kitchen, the sound of bottles or jars smashed on the floor.
Susan made to back away…and then something hit her from behind. Right between the shoulder blades with an explosion of impact and agony. She was tossed into the room, slipping on the blood and landing atop the lovers. The man paid her no notice; he was intent on what he was doing. The woman hissed at him. She struck out with a backhanded fist, catching Susan in the mouth and sending her sprawling. This time she landed in the viscera on the floor. She cried, slipping and sliding on it, feeling it under her shoes like greasy snakes.
The old woman spit phlegm at her.
Susan crawled away, whimpering and shaking.
And there, right before her, standing high and almost proud, was a nude woman with a baseball bat in her hands. Her breasts and belly and face were painted with snaking transverse bands of blood. Her hair was wild, caked with filth. Her blue eyes were wide and bright, filled with a glacial coolness. They stared down with a catatonic glaze that was shiny and wet and utterly inhuman. More like the hungry stare of a wolf.
Now you got it, hon. Wolves. As in were-wolves. You know, shapeshifters, Lon Chaney and all that horseshit. Werewolves. That’s what these things are. Not people. Not really. Not anymore. Maybe they’re not sprouting hair and fangs like movie werewolves, but please be assured, my dear, these are fucking werewolves and you are now in their lair.
And all of that was disturbing, hell yes, but what seemed even worse was that this crazy woman had a leather sling of arrows on her back and shiny onyx bow over one shoulder like she was some demented Amazonian.
“Please,” Susan said, holding out her hands for mercy, trying to catch her breath, trying to find her center which was so lopsided, inverted, and upside down by this point she could have slid right off it like a fried egg in a grease-slicked pan. Over, Under, Sideways, Down, as The Yardbirds had once said. She swallowed, feeling the dryness of her throat. Her heart pounded, blood rushed at her temples. “Please…I didn’t mean to barge in, I was looking for someone, but they’re not here so I’ll just be on my-”
“Hhhhssssssttt!” the woman said by way of reply, forcing hissing air through clenched teeth.
Susan shook her head, not understanding such gibberish. At least on the surface…but down below where the wild things were, where they ran crusted with blood and gamey with their own rancid animal stink, she understood all too well. She was being told in a very rudimentary way to shut her fucking mouth. For the werewolf woman did not want to hear shit like that. She was not accustomed to her prey blabbing on and on; she liked her meat to know its place, to sit on the plate and exude a tasty pink juice, to be tender and filling, to satisfy both tongue and gut.
“What’s…what’s your name?” Susan said, trying a different tact even though her animal instinct told her she was literally fucked here like the virgin on prom night in the old joke.
The woman cocked her head, her face scrubbed of emotion like that of a mannequin. There was excrement all over her feet. Her pale thighs and calves were bright with fingers of blood that seemed to have run from between her legs as if she were menstruating. And judging from the hot, meaty smell wafting off her, Susan knew she was.
“Please,” Susan said again.
The woman grinned. Her teeth were stained red. “I’m Angie,” she said. Then she said it again: “ I’m Annnngeeeee,” the way a little kid would say it, enjoying the way it filled her throat and rolled off her tongue. And this more than anything told Susan Donnel all she needed to know about the brain behind those eyes: simple, childlike, the cunning and savage appetites of a beast coupled with the rudimentary reasoning of a child.
Susan opened her mouth to speak and as she did so, Angie swung the baseball bat with a smooth muscular grace. It hit Susan in the mouth and she in turn hit the floor, her teeth scattering like dice. She was barely conscious, just gagging on her own blood. She was barely aware of the two men that stepped into the room and ripped her clothes off beneath the full approving glare of Angie Preen.
Susan came awake to the sharp stab of penetration between her legs, a heavy man that stank of sweat and shit pumping away on her. The horror of this floored her: the invasion, the brutality, the violation of the act. She let out a wild, whooping scream as those hips pistoned and the man’s greasy, hot flesh pressed into her own. His breath blew in her face and stank like meat green with rot, like blood and vomit and boiling fevers. His face was a mask of dried blood, just that grinning mouth and gnashing yellow teeth, the stupid bovine staring eyes, unblinking.
The woman named Angie looked on with amusement. She licked her lips. Her free hand went down to her crotch. Gasping, she slid a finger into herself as Susan was raped.
Oh God, oh God, oh God, please please please no no no Then there was a keening cry and another man, a heavy, bulky man, kicked her attacker off and then mounted her himself. Then the first man pulled him free and the two of them were fighting, rolling through the shit-stained papers in the living room, kicking and biting, snarling and scratching.
Angie squatted down by Susan, she grabbed her by the hair and brought her contorted, tearful face to her own. As Susan trembled, Angie sniffed her like a dog. Her throat. Her breasts. Her hair. Then she threw her down.
“When you’re done,” Angie told the fighting men in a low grating voice that was practically a growl, “bring the cunt along. We’ll need her…”
30
When they got outside, Macy said, “Well, Mrs. Brackenbury said she hasn’t seen mom. It was worth a shot, I guess.”
“Did she say anything odd to you?”
Macy shook her head. “No…well, I mean, she’s always a little flaky, isn’t she? Her and those cats? I told her to be careful, to lock her door, but she wouldn’t listen. I don’t even think she knew what I was talking about. She’s in her own little world or something.”
Louis had to smile. “Well, she’s getting on in years, you know,” he said, trying to be diplomatic.
“Tell me about it. She calls me ‘Nancy’ half the time.”
Louis suppressed a giggle and led Macy over to his Dodge. There was still a smear of blood on the handle from when he’d jumped in there after his encounter with those wigged-out cops. But the driver’s side rear door was open. He hadn’t left it open. He was sure of it. Without alerting Macy to his concern, he casually closed it, but not before noticing that his bag with the steaks in it was gone. Just…gone. Somebody came and stole raw steaks,
