Scott liked to kill things. He liked to run down animals in the road. On several occasions he’d run down people. Once they’d plastered a little girl on one of them fancy 10-speeds, then dumped her in the woods up near Waynesville. Another night one of the retard kids from up on Prospect Hill was loping along the Old Dunwich Road just as pretty as you please. Scott had been driving that night, too, and he’d run the kid right smack dab down-Ka- BUMP! “Scott-Boy, why’d you wanna go and do a thang like that?” Gut had inquired.
“Fer the hail of it, I s’pose,” Scott had replied.
Scott-Boy and Gut were what clinical psychiatrists would label as “affect stage sociopaths.” They harbored no organic brain defects, nor were they subject to any mode of reactive or cerebro-chemical maladaptations. They were capable human beings who knew right from wrong, who had never been sexually abused, and who had never been locked in closets as children. Both were born of decent, hard-working parents and had been raised in an acceptable fashion. Their conduct could not be liberally excused by environment, abuses incurred during the formative years, or abnormal brain chemistry. Instead—and to put it more simply—they were two bad, evil, shit- kicking, redneck motherfuckers.
For instance, they didn’t work. They were perfectly capable of working, they just didn’t. “Money’s walkin’ all over!” Scott-Boy had once postulated. “Uh, yeah,” Gut had agreed. Best thing about the south counties—most were unchartered, which meant they didn’t have police departments. So they came down regular from Crick City (razzin’ too close to home Scott likened to poopin’ where they et); a thirty-minute drive up or down the Route easily carried them to any number of remote townships where they enjoyed complete anonymity. Everyone drove big pickups this part of the state, and everyone wore the same duds: boots, straightleg jeans, and jean jackets over T-shirts. Redneck fashion was also great camouflage.
Their lives were happily without direction; Scott-Boy Tuckton and Gut lived week to week in pursuit of their joys. But such pursuits, regardless of their nature, generally required some mode of finance. Beer cost money, after all. So did truck payments, trailer rent, and insurance. Bar whores were the easiest pickings. The south counties had more roadside watering holes than you could shake a busted camshaft at, and each and every one of the joints had at least one parking lot head queen to take care of a fella’s business. Wait till about one a.m. any Friday night, entice one of these fine young ladies into the truck with the typical promise of cash for services rendered, let her do her thing first, of course, then crack her upside the head with the brass knucks. What you were generally left with for your troubles was a purse chock full of tens and twenties. An even better gig was the fellas. Any Friday night (Friday nights were best ’cos the first thing these peabrains did before heading to the bars was cash their paychecks) just hide yourself in the woods behind the bar or poolhall, wait for some homeboy to stumble shitfaced into the parking lot, then crack him a good one upside the head with the brass knucks. Drag him back into the woods, tie him, gag him, then pluck the wallet, which was almost sure to contain half of the dupe’s cashed paycheck. A few minutes later the next sucker drags ass out, then you repeat the process. Scott and Gut could commonly take out six or eight guys like this at the same parking lot, in like, about the space of an hour.
Lately, on the side, they made even better money running angel dust for a couple of local dope dealers. Not exactly a job, but it was something. They didn’t use the stuff; they just helped sell it a few nights a month. A thousand dollars a drop, not what you’d call chicken feed. So between that and ripping folks off, Scott-Boy and Gut did all right, yesiree.
Once the money was had, their joys remained. “Razzin’,” Scott-Boy liked to call it. “What say let’s razz up some splittails tonight, ya reckon,” he’d suggest. Hitchhikers provided prime razzin’. Lordy Jeez, in this day and age you’d think gals’d be a tad smarter than to get into a vehicle with a perfect stranger. Just the same, if you cruised around long enough, there she’d be, skippin’ along some road darker than the devil’s buttcrack. She’d be pretty more times than not, and she’d always be alone. And Gut would just pull the pickup right on over. Scott-Boy always did the talkin’, in his laid back, farm boy sort of way. “Hey there, purdy lady, where you headed this fine night? Well ain’t that just plumb dandy, see, ’cos it just so happens me and my buddy here, we’se headed fer the ’zact same place. Just slide right on in, and we’ll git ya where you’re goin’ safe an’ sound.”
Safe an’ sound, indeed.
Scott-Boy and Gut knew every dell, grove, hillock, and backwood hideyhole anywhere they might happen to be at any given time.
All’s it took was one turnoff, and the unsuspecting gal realized that something wasn’t right, but of course by the time this realization had been made, it was already too late. Way too late. Way on back deep in the woods, no one could hear them scream, and scream they did—like holy everlivin’ heck. Diversity proved requisite to any venture of uniqueness, and Scott “Scott-Boy” Tuckton was a very diverse young man. He liked to hear them scream, and his powers of imagination spared no possibility through which they might do so. Ol’ Scott-Boy, yeah, he had himself a headful of visions that would make Ivan the Terrible look like fuckin’ Bambi.
Gut supposed they’d killed at least a dozen people. They’d never really set out to, it just happened once by accident. One night they’d been jacking drunks as usual, and Scott-Boy had cracked one poor fucker a tad too hard upside the head with the brass knucks. Exit muggers, enter killers. The poor fucker’s head had split, showing pink brains. “Well, hail, would ya look what I just up and done?” Scott-Boy remarked with dull fascination. Like they say, accidents will happen. But for Scott, murder was like potato chips; ya couldn’t eat just one. That same night, Scott had sliced open a bar whore’s throat after she’d fellated him in the truck. “Jesus ta Pete, Scott-Boy!” Gut exclaimed. “What you go and do that fer?” “Dunno,” Scott chuckled his remorse. “Dag good thang we got the vinyl pole-stree.” He scratched his head. “Gals shore do got theirselfs a lotta blood in ’em, huh?”
Gut pretty much just helped out or watched. It was Scott who was the virtuoso. He had a thing for slowly stranglin’ gals during coitus, fashioning a tourniquet around their necks with sisal twine and a dowel rod. He had also buggered, then beaten to death, a hippie boy he’d first thought was a hippie girl; he’d carved up a yuppie couple he’d found camping in the woods; and then there was that redheaded hitchhiker who must have been at least eight months and twenty-nine days pregnant…
But, never mind what they did to her.
— | — | —
Three
Home, sweet home, Phil thought as mordantly as he could. Was it shame? How would it look? Christ, a Master’s degree and over ten years on a major metropolitan department, and now I’m coming right back to where I started, back to good old Crick City, the moron mecca of the world.
A few minutes after exiting the interstate, the road funneled down, plummeting with his spirits. This was State Route 154, known to locals simply as “The Route,” a winding 30-mile patchjob of asphalt that cut a swath through south county’s rolling hills and forest belts. It also cut a swatch through some of the poorest and least developed townships in the state: Luntville, Tylersville, Waynesville, and Crick City. Soon the massive scape of the metropolis faded behind him, only to be replaced by bridged ravines, famished tracks of farmland, trailer parks, and one rundown shack after another. The pits, Phil reflected. Waynesville, Luntville, Crick City—it didn’t matter what these towns were called; to him, they were all the same. Bustedville. Even the woods looked destitute—sickly vegetation and ancient garbage clotted between dense masses of trees, some scrawny and skeletally thin, others stout as sewer pipes and hundreds of feet high. Rampant fungus shined like green-white snot over diseased and grossly knotted tree trunks. Most of the road signs could no longer be read thanks to the pockmarks of midnight shotguns; shattered glass littered the shoulders like halite, along with the innumerable carcasses of small animals —“Road Pizza” in police parlance. “Possum Pie”—which were forever being run down by motorists to be scavenged of course by still more small animals, which were then promptly run down by still more motorists. Cyclic carnage.
The easterly ridge loomed to Phil’s right, a great wall that seemed to keep the entire Route in perpetual darkness. He passed one town called Lockwood where, several years ago, most of the tiny population had disappeared seemingly overnight, and another, Prospect Hill, where dozens of residents had died or gone blind all on the same weekend from bad hootch. Yes, hootch, moonshine, panther piss—some of these communities made the stuff like it was the Prohibition era, from stills back in the woods. Phil had tried it once, and one sip had about knocked him on his ass.
Abrupt turnoffs periodically marked the Route, roads with absurdly redneck names. Turkey Neck Road, Furnace Branch Road, Old Mill Road—there was even a Tick Neck Road, and as far as Phil knew, ticks didn’t even
