Jane sniffles and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.
“She… she ran downstairs. She ran outside.”
Jane falls forward and buries her head against my chest. I slowly move my left hand further up her cheek, into the tangles of her curly red hair. My right hand cups her jawline and I continue rubbing, continue working out the tension.
“What the hell is going on, Richard? I don’t understand, I just don’t understand.”
“It’s simple really, Janey.” I whisper as she sobs against my body. “You’re a fucking bitch. And your time has come.”
Before the words truly have a chance to sink in, I twist her head with a savage jerk. I hear the bone snap, feel the pop through my hand, feel the power course through my body again.
She’s out there somewhere. And, by God, I’ll find her.
I will find her and make her mine.
I throw back my head and let loose with a savage cry that strains my vocal chords and sounds more animal than human. It’s the sound of primeval desires crashing up against the trappings of the modern world. It’s the sound of generations of repression and subjugation.
It’s the sound of havoc.
I am the King of this strange new world.
And my Queen is out there.
Waiting for me to claim her.
PART TWO
Climax of Brutality
CHAPTER EIGHT
The clouds in the sky seemed to dance with the distant glow of flames and the smell of smoke was thick and heavy. There weren’t any buildings that had been firebombed on this block yet, but — in the brief moments of silence that sometimes settled over the city –she could hear the crackling of fire, the roar of a hungry beast that devoured homes and buildings and left nothing more than blackened skeletons in its wake. But those instances of silence were few and far between. For the most part, the night was filled with the revving of engines, with gunshots and the tinkling of broken glass; screams and cries for help that went unanswered until they were abruptly cut off mid-sentence.
It was like the whole world had gone insane and she couldn’t help but wonder where the military had went. Where were the soldiers, the cops, the keepers of law and order? Shouldn’t they be out there in the streets, fighting their way through this urban nightmare and protecting those who simply wanted everything to go back to the way it was? But she hadn’t seen so much as a Humvee since she’d ran out of the apartment building, much less any type of organized retaliation against the anarchists who now seemed to hold the city in their grip.
What the hell was going on here?
Cody really was dead. She knew that now. At first she tried to tell herself that Richard was lying, that he was trying to gain control over her mind and emotions just as he’d tried to do with her body. But when she reached the bottom of the stairs Polly had seen his body sprawled across the foyer, sprawled in a pool of his own blood. She’d tried to look away but wasn’t quick enough: the images of broken bones jabbing through his flesh and clothes, the way his head seemed completely flat on the side facing the floor, the bizarre angles his legs and arms were splayed out in. All of these things had been burned into her consciousness and returned to haunt her visions each time she closed her eyes.
But she couldn’t think about that now. She had to push it all deep down inside, to swallow the pain and try to find something else to fill the void that threatened to cause her to implode. Cody would want her to survive, to go on, to fight tooth and nail if she must. And to do that she had to keep a clear head. There would be plenty of time for grief later, but for now she needed to focus. To stay alive.
After scrambling over the pile of bodies outside the main door, she’d made her way to the entrance of the apartment complex. The wrought iron gate that had once kept the world at bay was lying in the center of the street, the bars twisted and bent as if they had been pulled free with a force greater than a single person could ever manage. Poking her head around the corner, she saw a few people zigzagging back and forth through the darkness. But the majority of them seemed to be a block or so to the south. She could see their silhouettes, the way they dove through the air at one another, rolling across the ground as they grappled for control, bright bursts of gunfire, complete and utter chaos.
She slipped into the shadows along the wall and inched her way north instead, trying her best to stay low and quiet. She felt like her white shirt was as clear as a billboard, advertising her presence to anyone who might happen by. But she would need to replace it soon anyhow. During the struggle with Richard, it had been stretched and ripped to the point that it no longer really held its shape and kept trying to slide down over her breasts.
What the fuck had gotten into him anyway? He’d been like an animal, his lips pulled back into a snarl, that hungry look elongating his features, seeming to change him into a stranger right before her eyes. There was no doubt in her mind what he’d planned on doing to her. He’d made that abundantly clear. But how far would it have went? If she had decided to take the so-called easy road, like she did when she was a child, would he have been content to simply have his way and leave her crying on the table? Or did he have darker designs on her? If Jane hadn’t showed up when she did, God only knows how all of that would have turned out.
Richard. Sweet, unassuming Richard. It just didn’t make any sense. Sure, she’d caught him ogling her on few occasions and at the time had thought it was kind of funny. She and Jane had used to joke about it at the club, how he had this little schoolboy crush on her, how they could probably blow his friggin’ mind if she just slipped out of her clothes and hopped into bed with them one evening.
But there’d never been any indication, never any sign, that he was capable of something like this. And that, quite frankly, scared her more than anything else that had happened over the course of the last several weeks. How quickly and completely someone whom she thought she’d known could change. How he could go from being this mousy little office worker one minute to a drooling psychopath the next. And what exactly had happened to Cody? Had Richard been responsible for that as well? No, he couldn’t have been. The gashes in his shirt, the bloodstains that had seeped all across his torso… that was definitely murder. And she couldn’t believe that her best friend’s boyfriend could just outright kill one of their own. In cold blood, no less…
“Yeah,” she thought, “well yesterday you never woulda pegged him for a sicko fuckin’ rapist either, would you? Don’t put anything past that son of a bitch, girl.”
She knew her inner voice was right. The only person she could trust now was herself. Everything else had changed too much. Everything else was too damn confusing.
She picked her way through the remains of a plate glass window and into the darkness of Wilson’s Department Store. She could barely see racks overturned, clothes strewn about the floor, broken jewelry cases, and mannequins posed in vulgar positions. Finding another shirt in this mess would be tough, but it was necessary. She needed something dark and, as much as she hated to admit it, something tight fitting. She couldn’t afford for a skirt or a baggy t-shirt to get hung up on something if she needed to make a quick getaway. So she’d take her time and pick through the wreckage that used to be the women’s section, find exactly what she needed and go on from there.