We will call you with instructions this evening at eight o’clock your time. You have to be checked into a motel or hotel by then. You might want to get some rest.
That was thoughtful of them. It would put me on the other side of Huntsville, but 8:00 was late to be looking for a room. I’d start looking well south of the city.
The phone buzzed, and I picked it up wearily. So soon. “Yeah?”
“Hey, babe. What’s up?”
The voice was only vaguely familiar. “I don’t know. What is up? Who are you?”
“Break my heart, babe—this is Ron! Ron Duquest, the only guy between you and a million bucks.”
“Jesus! How on Earth did you get this number? I just got this phone.”
“What do you mean?” he said. “You e-mailed me the number this morning from… Missi-fucking-sippi? What the hell are you doin’ down south?”
What should I or could I tell him? Of course we were being overheard, at least my side of the conversation. I chose my words carefully. “Unlikely as it sounds,” I said, “I’m doing a little thing for the army. Secret.”
“The army? I thought you hated them.”
“What can I say, Ron? Their money spends.”
“That’s great, babe. But what about me? And my money? The army takes precedence over my monster?”
Jesus. “Didn’t I just send you a chapter?”
“Jack, yeah, you sent me a chapter, like a week ago.”
“Couple of days,” I said.
“The monster’s got the bikin’ guy,” he said. “He’s about to fuckin’ eat him, and the cops are closing in while he sharpens the fuckin’ knife, and you have to do a job for the fuckin’ army? One of us is crazy, man, and I’m sure as hell it’s not fuckin’ me!”
I had to smile in spite of everything. “It’s me, Ron. I am totally fuckin’ bug-fuck.” I checked my watch. “Look, I’m about to knock off driving for the night. I’ll stop at a place with Wi-Fi and do you a couple of pages.”
“You got to, man! I gotta know, does he eat the guy—no, don’t tell me! I wanna agonize!”
“Okay, Ron. I’ll do as much as I can.”
“Do more! I wanna know what happens to this fuckin’ freak!”
“Do what I can,” I repeated. “Talk to you tomorrow.” I clicked it off and tossed it on the seat. A big sigh surprised me, and then I had to laugh.
If you only knew, Ronald. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Using the term loosely.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Hunter removed the tape from his victim’s mouth slowly but gently. This one was also athletic, but not as skinny as the girl last month, good.
Hunter had duct-taped his wrists and ankles. He pushed the bandana that had been covering his eyes up onto his forehead. “If you make any noise, I will blind and gag you again. But I will hurt you first.”
“Okay,” he said hoarsely. “I understand.”
“I do want you to understand,” Hunter said. “I want you to know that what’s happening to you is special.”
“Thank you.” His eyes tracked all around the trailer. A library of science fiction and popular science paperbacks in floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Large old medical books, anatomy and physiology. A too-large billiard table took up half the floor space.
Hunter crouched and lifted the table’s false top of green felt, not straining. Underneath, a metal surface with blood gutters. Its white enamel had been scrubbed, but stains persisted.
“This will not be an autopsy, despite appearances.” He opened a drawer and took out a plastic case of glittering scalpels and a pair of surgical saws. “Autopsies are for dead people. This will be more like a very thorough physical examination.”
“At the end of which I’ll be dead?” His voice quavered.
“We shall see.” He took large shears out of the drawer and advanced on his prisoner.
“What are you doing?”
“Preparation.” He started with the left arm of Steve’s T-shirt, scissoring it open to the neck. Then he did the other side, slowly, shearing it all the way to the waist. The ruined garment fell to the floor. Then he snipped open his biking shorts, leaving him clad only in a jock strap and incongruous running shoes.
He looked up defiantly. “Does that do it for you? A helpless victim gives you a hard-on?”
With a thumb Hunter pulled down the front of his own shorts, exposing nothing. “Not really.”
He stared. “You’re not… aren’t you…”
“There’s something there. Not what you might expect, and small.”
“What… are you?”
“Not human. You will have to die for knowing that. But you would die anyhow.”
Steve’s body was pale as wax under black hair. “What… what will you do?”
“Eat you, ultimately,” he said in a playful tone. “You are prey, after all, and I caught you, fair and square.”
“No.”
“It’s not a movie, though, so you won’t have to watch as I consume the minor pieces. I will kill you more or less quickly, and feed on you for several days. As you would a cow or a pig.”
“No,” he said, lying inanely. “I’m a vegetarian.”
“Another one. Do you think carrots feel no pain? You tear their skin off and chop them up into—”
Someone pounded on the door. “Open up in there!”
Hunter picked up the shotgun in the corner, smiling calmly. “A friend of yours?”
The rapping resumed and he stepped toward the door. As Steve shouted, “He has a gun!” he pointed the shotgun at about chest level and fired one deafening blast, and then two more, blowing the flimsy trailer door to pieces.
The gunstock had an elastic band that held ten or a dozen shells. He reloaded three and then kicked out what was left of the door, and stepped through blasting.
Steve could hear rifle shots and then a burst from a submachine gun. He saw Hunter jump from the top step.
For a couple of minutes there were more shots, and the sound of men shouting. Then it was quiet, and a short man wearing SWAT armor lumbered through the door with an assault rifle. “You all right, sir?”
“I’ve been better.” His voice was somehow flat and calm. “Thank you for coming.” He looked out the door. “You killed it?”
“Oh, yeah. I hit him twice myself, and he walked straight into a shotgun blast right after.”
“So it’s dead?”
“Gotta be.”
From farther away, a short spat of automatic-weapon fire. Then a shotgun barked twice, and a third time.
“Hope so.”
EPILOGUE
The coroner of Ilsworth County, Georgia, has done hundreds of autopsies, but never one of such a huge person, and he’s not looking forward to it. Mountains of messy fat to slice through before you get to the organs. But he prepares the body and makes his first incision. Then he staggers back, dropping the scalpel.
Inside, there’s no fat, and not a single organ he can identify. Some of them are shiny metal.
Its eyes snap open.
10.
Never thought I’d be homesick for a Holiday Inn. This rustic-looking place was Mom’s Home Away from Home, which brought to mind Nelson Algren’s three rules of life: “Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.”