“This piece of shit murdered you and Trina. He tortured you to find out where we were keeping Mrs. Lincoln. I just made him bring you back. You should have seen it, Harry. I’ve never seen anything like it. You were dead as disco, bro, and he just breathed into you and you were alive again. You don’t remember it? Were you in heaven?”
“Heaven? Fuck no! I don’t remember shit except waking up tied to a chair and seeing you three all standing around looking at me. I went for a drink after work. I was walking to my car and then I woke up here. You’re saying I was dead?”
“You were in full rigor. He had cut your nose off and then I think you choked on your own vomit. He had a gag over your mouth and you must have thrown up.”
Sarah and Josh went to cut Detective Lassiter free. She was still unconscious, snoring soundly as if she were merely asleep and not reanimated. Josh took the butter knife to the tape around her arms and shoulders while Sarah squatted down in Lassiter’s blood to cut her ankles free. Harry and Torres were still debating whether to shoot Dale and how to explain to the cops outside why Harry and Trina were walking out instead of being carted out in body bags. Dale had lost consciousness and was lying on his side with his face in the detective’s blood. Sarah had the urge to take the butter knife from Josh and try to cut Dale’s throat with it but it was too dull. She considered stabbing him in the eye with it instead. She removed the last strip of tape from Trina’s ankles just as the woman woke.
Detective Lassiter looked around in a panic. She was breathing hard and struggling to free herself from the rest of the tape while trying to reorient herself. Before anyone could react, she leaped up from the chair and ran over to Detective Torres. She snatched the Glock out of his hand and pointed the gun down at Dale.
“Motherfucker!”
She pulled the trigger, once, twice, three times, four times, until Torres finally wrenched it back out of her hands. All four shots had gone directly into Dale’s skull, scattering his brains across the floor.
The front door opened and police officers rushed into the room with guns drawn. Torres turned his back and held up his hands to tell the officers to hold their fire.
“Hold it. Hold it. I got this. It’s all under control. I got this.”
Sarah felt the pain even before her body began to fly apart. She looked over at Josh as his head began to bleed and his throat tore open in the same spot where Dale had cut him in the video they had taken on their spy camera. Harry collapsed first, convulsing on the floor and choking. His nose fell off, leaving a hollow crater in the center of his face like there had been before Dale had resurrected him.
Trina began losing chunks of flesh and skin. She stumbled around screaming as her skin sloughed off in sheets and her vagina fell apart.
Sarah looked down at her body as her chest tore open. One of her breasts fell off and the other lost a nipple and most of its skin. Her stomach ripped open and her intestines spilled out onto the floor; then she began to choke as her throat split wide and blood filled her throat and lungs. She collapsed between her dead husband and her murderer.
As she lost consciousness, she heard Dale beside her begin breathing rapidly. She turned her head and tried to focus her eyes as her vision began to darken. She could make out what was left of Dale’s skull as it began to knit itself back together.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Monica O’ Rourke and Kelli Dunlap for their much needed last minute assistance in proofreading this book; to Tod Clark, my dedicated reader, for his honest opinions; to Larry Roberts of Bloodletting Books for being the first to publish my first novel; to Brian Cartwright for the beautiful work on the limited edition; and Brian Keene, Maurice Broaddus, my wife Christie, and my son Sultan for their constant support and encouragement. Oh, and special thanks to Jack Staynes for his rabid enthusiasm. Here’s a little bit of siction for ya.
Praise for Wrath James White and Succulent Prey!
“This should definitely be on your reading list.”
—Shroud Magazine
“If you want to read something different from anything else you’ll read this year, this is the book to read.”
—Fear Zone
“Succulent Prey reads like a rollercoaster ride through Donner Pass sitting next to Jeffrey Dahmer with an engine fueled by Rob Zombie…Never boring, always exciting and bristling with violent pleasures, White’s sharp, cutting prose…pulls readers along until the bloody end.”
—Cemetery Dance
Other Leisure Books by Wrath James White:
SUCCULENT PREY