lodged in his cervical vertebrae. Terrence's body began to tremble and shake. Blood sprayed from the wound in his neck and bubbled up from his mouth. A gurgling, whistling, wheezing sound came from the gash in the big guy's lacerated throat. The chords in his neck bulged as if he were trying to scream. It had not been the quick cut Todd had been expecting. He had hoped to behead him.
It took a bit of effort to dislodge the cleaver from Terrence's neck. There was a sickening wet ripping and cracking sound as Todd yanked the blade free in an explosion of bright red arterial blood erupting from the big man's jugular and carotid arteries which had both been severed. Todd turned his head as his stomach finally betrayed him and he regurgitated onto the plastic, depositing the vegetarian burrito he'd had for lunch into the pool of blood.
Oh, God. This is fucking horrible. Oh, my God. I can't believe I killed the guy. It had to be done. I had no choice. It had to be done.
Terrence was still making those gurgling sounds. His eyes were completely dilated and his lips were moving as if he were trying to speak. His hands were still cuffed behind him and his arms duct taped to his sides but Todd could hear the man's fingers raking the plastic. Todd's stomach heaved again and more of its contents erupted from his throat.
Todd kept his head turned as he brought the cleaver down again and again tossing blood into the air each time he wrenched it free for another blow. The wet sticky crack of the cleaver striking flesh, blood, and bone was making Todd's stomach do flip-fl ops. The bile continued to rise in Todd's throat. His throat was raw and scalded from swallowing it back down. Finally, he stood up and grabbed the serrated knife from the knife rack and sawed the rest of the way through Terrence's vertebrae. Thankfully, the man was dead by then. Terrence's head rolled off the plastic and bounced against the refrigerator.
Todd stared at it. That warm inviting smile that had wooed so many women into having his children was nowhere in evidence. The man had died in terror and agony and it showed in the rictus on his face. Todd stood up slowly on wobbly legs. He was shaken and physically and mentally exhausted. He stepped over the big man's corpse and staggered back into his bedroom. His body was completely covered in blood but at least he hadn't ruined anymore of his clothes. He'd have to figure out what to do with his clothes as well as the body in the morning. Right now he was exhausted. He needed some sleep.
As Todd stepped out of the shower, dried off and climbed under the sheets, he wondered about his ability to sleep with a man's castrated and beheaded body exsanguinating on his kitchen floor. Surely that had to mean he was crazy. Only a psychopath or some sort of sociopath could sleep after something like that, with a dead man in the next room. Todd was too tired to give the question much consideration. He closed his eyes and drifted off, dreaming about his mother's bleeding vagina and his father's ruptured skull just like he always did. They were the only dreams he ever had.
Chapter Nine
The sun intruded into Todd's bedroom, waking him from a sleep filled with gore-streaked nightmares of pain and death. Perspiration trickled down his forehead into his eyes. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, squinting against the sunlight. His head felt fuzzy and sluggish as if he were waking from an all-night drinking binge. He remembered all the tequila he'd drank the night before just as the headache split through his skull. Seconds later his alarm clock went off. Todd smacked it off the night stand. It continued to blare. Clamping his hands over his ears he stood up and stepped on the clock with his bare foot. The alarm went off and the radio came on. Todd stomped down on it again and again, crushing it into silence. His headache was pounding now, throbbing in his temples.
Todd looked around the room trying to reorient himself. He half expected to see his father's corpse with the skull caved in on one side lying against the wall across the room, the dead priest, chest hollowed out with one bullet, skull collapsed by another, his mother, still bleeding from her vagina, and Terrence Mohammed's headless body. But all he saw was his Sierra Club Earth Day posters and posters of Jim Morrison, R.E.M. and Kurt Cobain, his CD collection, the wall-mounted Sharper Image CD player, stacks of magazines, milk crates filled with books, the futon he slept on with the shattered radio/alarm clock alongside it and the pictures of his mom and dad and his dog Honey that sat on the nightstand by his bed. Todd dressed quickly for work still trying to shake off his headache, the previous nights blood-spattered dreams still echoing in his mind.
After he was dressed, Todd sat down on his bed and opened his laptop. He needed to connect with other like-minded individuals, others who understood the cause. He needed to talk to Heimlich.
Todd clicked on the link in his favorites to the Zero Population Messageboard and a message popped up stating that the link could not be found. He tried it again several times and then tried the link to the Zero Population website. That was gone too.
'What the fuck is going on?'
Todd clicked onto a search engine and typed in Zero Population. The first thing that came up, at the top of the page, was today's headline, 'Heimlich Anatolli Arrested for Terrorism.' Todd clicked on the link to the story.
October 16th 2009, New York City, New York, Dr. Heimlich Anatolli, Biology Professor at MacDonald University and author of the controversial book Zero Population was arrested today when he and a group of university students attempted to poison New York City's water supply with an experimental sterility drug called Progesterex. Ironically, Heimlich was one of the inventor's of the controversial drug marketed as a non-surgical alternative to tubaligation surgery.
In a written statement given to police investigators, Dr. Anatolli cited overpopulation and the resultant 'terminal damage to the ecosystem' as his reason for the attack. In the same statement, he indicated that, if successful, it would have been the beginning of a worldwide campaign targeting 25 of the most populace cities in the world including Los Angeles, Mumbai, Sao Paolo, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Osaka. According to researchers, this would have resulted in the involuntary sterilization of nearly 300 million women. 'His efforts would have reduced population growth by more than half. It might have been just what the environment needed,' said one prominent Socio-Anthropologist who asked not to be identified. In his statement, Dr. Anatolli was quoted as saying 'My only regret is that I failed. Hopefully someone else will carry on my work or else we're all doomed.'
Dr. Anatolli will be arraigned today on charges of terrorism and 10 million counts of aggravated assault.
Todd could barely believe what he was reading. He clicked on several other articles but none of them contained any more details. Todd was alone now. His mentor had been captured. All hope was lost. Somehow, Todd had to get his hands on the drug and continue the man's work. He Googled Progesterex and could find no one in America who sold the drug. There was a factory in Beijing that manufactured it but they could no longer legally export it to America.
'There has to be a way.'
Todd continued searching the web for another hour until he had to leave for work. He found out everything about the drug except how to acquire it. It had originally been marketed as a hormonal therapy drug for chemotherapy patients only to be discontinued when it was discovered that it reduced the amount of estrogen and progesterone the body produces, sending women into early menopause and rendering them infertile. Heimlich had gotten a grant to continue research on the drug as a safe and permanent form of birth control, a non-surgical alternative to tubaligation.
Obviously, he had perfected it.
The kitchen was a mess. Luckily Todd was already running late for work so there was no time for breakfast even if he'd had the stomach for it. Todd could not believe that he had left it this way. If anyone were to have peeked into his apartment he'd have been on death row in a heartbeat. Terrence's body still lay on the plastic where he had left it. The blood had finally coagulated and hardened in places to a brownish red crust. The man's head was still lying against the refrigerator. Todd considered finishing the job of hacking his body up for disposal, but could think of no way to do it that wouldn't have ruined his clothes and made him even later. Terrence would have to wait until after work.
The big man's body would have to be cut into pieces small enough to haul off in his messenger bag, unless he could borrow someone's car. That was going to take a lot of work. He wondered if he could call Stephanie and ask
