“Ali’s gonna be pissed if you don’t stop this screwin’ around!” he called up to her. “We got shit to do!”
The hoist came swinging out by itself, with no sign of Fox.
Loco waited for a moment, staring up at the hayloft, but Fox didn’t reappear. He scowled and went into the barn.
“Fox!” he called, getting really irritated. He wanted to get on with it; he didn’t feel like wasting time playing nursemaid to Ali’s old lady. “Where are ya?”
The cigarette dangled from his mouth. I oughta just dump the goddamn gas out and toss the butt down and be done with it, he thought. Let the stupid bitch find her own way out. Serve her right if she got burned. He ground his teeth together. No, then he’d have to deal with Ali. Where’s Fox? he imagined Ali saying. Oh, she’s back in the barn, man. Oughta be nice and crispy by now. No, he didn’t guess Ali would go for that. Shit. He’d better get her and bring her the hell out.
“Stop screwin’ around!” he yelled up at the loft. “You’re messin’ everything up!”
There was no response.
“Shit,” he said savagely, staring up the ladder to the hayloft. He’d had it with her. He didn’t care if she was Ali’s old lady or not, he was going to grab her by the goddamn throat and toss her right out that big square window up there. “You’re dead now, woman!” he shouted.
He came up through the opening in the floor and stepped off the ladder onto the floorboards.
“Fox!”
He turned around . . . his jaw dropped and his eyes opened wide with shock at the sight of Fox dangling in the air, pinned to a crossbeam, impaled through the throat by the long tines of a pitchfork like a butterfly pinned to a board. Her eyes were ghastly, wide open, frozen into a stare of utter horror. Blood trickled down her leathers and dripped down onto the floor of the loft, soaking into the straw.
Loco panicked and turned to run.
The second pitchfork was driven deep into his stomach with a dull, wet, smacking sound; the long, sharp tines ripped through his entrails, penetrating deeply, going straight through him and coming out his back. Blood bubbled up into his throat as he opened his mouth to scream, and his hands clutched helplessly at the wooden shaft of the pitchfork, his horrified gaze fixed on his attacker. He staggered forward one step, and then his legs turned to rubber and collapsed beneath him. There was a brief period of the most incredible, agonizing pain he had ever experienced in his entire life, and then everything started spinning and he was falling as fire exploded in his mind and the whole world started burning.
Ali came hurrying up to the barn doors, carrying a heavy can of gasoline in each hand. He scowled at the sight of the closed doors and kicked at them, looking around to see if anyone had heard him. He waited for either Fox or Loco to let him in, but no one came. Angrily, he kicked the door again.
“Loco! Fox! Open, this damn door!”
There was no response from inside. Ali gritted his teeth and set the gas cans down, then pushed the door open himself. He picked up the cans and went inside, setting them down once again and looking all around the interior of the barn. They were nowhere in sight. He heard the sound of heavy footsteps up in the hayloft and looked up.
“What the hell are you two doin’ up there?” he demanded angrily. “You hear me talkin’ to you?”
He stormed over to the ladder and grabbed it, about to start climbing up, when suddenly Loco’s body was thrown down from the hayloft. It came flying down at Ali, landing right on top of him and sending him crashing to the ground. His eyes went wide as he saw all the blood and he shoved Loco’s corpse away, scrambling out from under it.
“FOX!” he screamed, and then he turned quickly as someone dropped down from the hayloft, landing back in a dark corner of the barn.
Ali looked around quickly and his gaze fell on a rusted machete among the array of gardening tools. He grabbed it and started for the back of the barn, his eyes glittering with homicidal fury.
“When I find you, you bastard, you’re a dead man!” he said.
He rushed back to the stalls, brandishing the machete, and then he spun quickly as he heard someone jump down behind him from the pile of hay bales in the corner. In the dim light inside the barn, he saw a huge figure coming at him, holding something in his hand. Ali swung the machete at the shadowy figure’s head with all his might.
Moving with amazing speed, his attacker ducked beneath the blow and Ali staggered, momentarily caught off balance, and then stars burst before his eyes as an iron plumber’s wrench came down upon his skull and he fell crashing to the floor. The wrench descended on him three more times like a sledgehammer driving in a railroad spike, but Ali never felt it.
Chapter Five
He saw them through the window of the barn, the girl dressed in a scanty blue bikini and wrapped in a towel, the boy in shorts, sneakers, and a T-shirt. Their wet hair was plastered down and they walked close to one another, hand in hand. They were coming up from the boat dock by the lake, heading directly toward the barn. Their voices floated up to him.
“What’re you doing?” Debbie said as Andy started to pull her toward the barn.
“We haven’t been in the barn yet,” Andy said, with a sly grin. “Let’s take a look.”
“Not now,” said Debbie, pulling away from him and walking back toward the house. “I’m cold.” The water in the lake was freezing and it had brought on
