Loui launched us into the air off a small boulder and we practically flew the last few feet towards the frozen figure. He had a brief moment to look up at whatever was now descending towards him and that was it.
We landed like a giant infant, Loui wrapping our legs around Maxwell’s middle as the momentum took him a few steps backwards. Our weight forced him down to the ground, the fat tub stumbling into the dirt as Loui closed his teeth on the soft flesh of neck. Maxwell had barely enough time to scream before the familiar warm gush of blood hit our cheeks. It felt wonderfully soothing, the sweet taste filling me with a kind of buzzing.
It still felt strange to be nothing more than a passenger in your own body, but when that taste of coppery sweetness hit my insides, it made everything else disappear. I was like a kid sitting on a ride, being fed popcorn as the entertainment was brought right to my lap.
Maxwell tried his hardest to struggle against Loui’s assault, but I think he knew there was little hope of escape. I still sometimes wonder what went through his mind during those final few moments. Did he think he was just a random victim of whatever attacked him? Did his victim set him up?
None of it mattered as another surprise suddenly occurred, this one something I secretly hoped for. Clancy suddenly knelt down beside us. In all honesty, I’d completely forgotten about the little squirt, too caught up in the excitement of the moment. But there he was, a look of delighted puzzlement lit up on his face.
Loui paused to look at the kid now sitting beside him. Without saying a word, Clancy looked down into the eyes of a terrified man who was feeling his life spilling from his throat. The kid spoke a single word, then knelt down and tore another hole into the fading Maxwell.
“Die.”
14.
Although it felt much longer, it was all over in less than 15 minutes. Loui continued for a few more minutes after feeling the final spasms. The blood had stopped flowing and everything started to feel much colder. Clancy had torn a few strips of flesh but had already stood aside, giving Loui time to finish his urges.
We sat in silence for a few moments after finally stopping. I think it was a little reflection, time to really let the event sink in. When it was over, I picked the corpse up and walked it into the trees. Clancy didn’t follow, remaining with the car as the lamps lit my path up.
I walked for several hundred yards, the moon just lighting the ground up enough for me to sidestep a few of the mine shafts that littered this area. When I was sure we’d gone far enough, I carefully shuffled towards one and dropped the sack of shit into it, listening as it tumbled down into the darkness, hitting the bottom with a flat thump and echo.
As I walked back, I kept my eyes peeled for a suitable piece of wood. There was plenty to choose from and it didn’t take long to find one. When I returned to where Clancy and the car were waiting, I started the engine again and drove the car back the other way, lighting up the waterhole that sat at the base of one cliff. I knew that it was where one of the open-cut mines had once sat. But time had filled it with a thick soup of water, mud and abandoned hardware.
I stepped out from the car, careful to keep my foot on the clutch. I grabbed the small branch I found on my return and now wedged it into the gas pedal, pushing the other end into the leather of the seat’s backrest. The engine was screaming and without pausing, pulled my foot off the clutch and rolled away from the car as the steering wheel tore from my grip.
The wheels spun a little in the gravel then launched itself towards the water’s edge, the headlamps bouncing up and down, briefly illuminating the edge of the cliff face. It hit the water with more speed than I expected and I think that’s what helped it out far further. The darkness returned almost instantly as the front sank beneath the wake it had created.
The engine ceased a moment later and as the rear of the car lifted high into the air, I remembered a ship that had sunk a couple of decades before, taking almost it’s entire compliment of passengers with it. As the car sank beneath the murky surface, the silence returned to the pit, just two lonely figures watching the final remnants of the murder disappearing beneath the waves.
That was the first murder of the Cider Hill rampage that followed soon after. It was also the first murder that Clancy was involved in. But there would be more to come in the following few months. Many more. And not even the kid would escape the horror that followed, as Loui was finally unleashed on the town.
Chapter 8
1.
It didn’t take long for the bodies to start piling up. To say that Loui was efficient is a real understatement. He made short work of those that had wronged us, the murders not needing a lot of planning. They were mostly hit and runs in the beginning, killing the victims in their homes where possible.
The cops struggled to make sense of them, the speed of the ever-increasing victims mounting. There were a few they never linked to the main murders that were riddling the town and that worked in our favour.
Some of our intended targets had moved away, sometimes to the next town or city, sometimes to another state. It didn’t matter. Clancy and I pursued them no matter how far we needed to
