Bryan Smith - The Killing Kind

The Tercel continued to slow down. Rob craned his neck and saw another narrow side road coming up on the left. Roxie put on the Tercel’s blinker and slowed almost to a full stop. Rob laughed, the blinker being sort of unnecessary. She turned left down the little road and Rob followed her lead, leaving the gravel rural route for a rutted dirt passage that was more like a path through the woods than an actual road. The road was rough on the Galaxie’s old frame, and Rob winced at every bump and jounce.

The dense line of trees to either side of the road seemed to grow taller the deeper they plunged into the woods, almost to the point of blotting out the sky. The path widened a little at one point, and Rob was unsurprised when Roxie chose to stop there. She parked the Tercel and Rob pulled in behind her. He turned the key backward in the ignition, silencing the rumbling engine. He got out and stretched, tired from the long hours of driving.

The Tercel’s driver-side door popped open and Roxie stepped out. She was wearing the same tight T-shirt and jeans she’d worn the previous day. His breath caught in his throat as his eyes traced the luscious lines of her body. The memories stirred again. His hands flexed. Instinct. He could almost feel her soft flesh beneath his fingers. She saw him looking and smiled.

He smiled back.

Then he saw the gun tucked into the waistband of her jeans and the smile faded. He remembered why they were out here and a renewed sense of bleakness colored his perceptions, temporarily dampened his desire for her.

She came to him and put her arms around him, held him very close, let him feel the weight of the gun against his belly. She smiled. “You almost ran, didn’t you?”

He shrugged. “No. Not really. Thought about it. It was never really gonna happen.”

Her smile brightened. “Good.”

He was getting hard again. Crazy. Even now, knowing what was about to happen, he wanted her. Wanted her bad. He cleared his throat. “Roxie…”

She laughed, touched a finger to his lips. “Time for fun later. Business first.”

She let go of him and walked over to the Tercel’s trunk, twirling a ring of keys on an upraised index finger. The keys belonged to the person locked inside the trunk. A man who was about to die. Roxie whistled a perky tune as she stood there with one hip cocked out and sorted through the keys. She found the right one and opened the trunk. The man lying in that dark space reached out to her with a shaky, pasty hand, which she knocked away. She tugged the gun out of her waistband, stepped back, and pointed it at him.

“Get out, fucker.”

A sob emerged from the trunk.

Roxie’s posture became more rigid and she thrust the gun toward the trunk. “GET THE FUCK OUT RIGHT FUCKING NOW, FUCKER!”

Rob cringed, his ears ringing.

More sobs came from the trunk, but now the man grasped the rubber-covered lip of the trunk and started to haul himself out. Rob’s heart began to race, the harsh reality of what was happening hitting him again. A man was about to be murdered and he had no intention of doing anything to prevent it. His conscience jeered at him. Still think you’re not a monster, asshole?

Rob felt like crying, but his eyes remained dry. Actual tears would only deepen his shame. The voice of his conscience was right. There was no way to absolve himself of his complicity in this heinous act. This was wrong. Flat-out fucking wrong. So that made him a bad guy. Okay, yeah, he wasn’t the one pulling the trigger, but big deal. He was letting it happen, which made him just as bad as Roxie.

The man was out of the trunk now. He stood up straight and blinked against the bright sunlight. He was a pudgy guy in his thirties. He wore dirty jeans and a wrinkled old Star Wars T-shirt. The guy looked at the gun and whined. He was pathetic. The aging nerd had probably been getting his ass handed to him since grammar school. Why should the last day of his miserable life be any different?

He had been a ridiculously easy mark. An hour of cruising the tawdrier parts of Starkweather, North Carolina, had led them to an apartment complex called the Shire, a name that elicited predictable giggles from Roxie. The complex was not a hive of activity that early on a working day. Most of the parking spaces were empty. Just one car had been parked outside of building G, the beat-up old Tercel belonging to Mr. Lucky here. He’d come out of his apartment and approached his car at just the wrong time (for him). It was stunning how fast it happened. The fat moron just gaped stupidly at Roxie as she leaped out of the Galaxie and brandished the gun at him. She whipped the gun across his face, snapping teeth and drawing blood. Then she snatched his keys from his hand, got the Tercel’s trunk open, and shoved him inside. It had all happened in just over a minute, and no one had seen a thing. No one inclined to do anything about it anyway. Roxie took the Tercel and Rob followed her to a nearby gas station, where Roxie purchased the atlas and outlined her plans. So now they had their new car.

And one last loose end to tie up.

Roxie waved the gun toward the line of trees on her right. “That way, fucker.”

The man glanced at the woods, licked his lips, and looked at Roxie again. “You’re about to kill me. Aren’t you?”

Roxie snickered. “Fatty wins the prize.”

“Then I’m not going anywhere. And the name’s Greg, not Fatty.”

Roxie glowered at him. “I care why?”

Greg sucked up his courage and sneered at her. “Don’t you think you should know the name of the person you’re killing? Maybe it makes it a little less impersonal, right? Like you’re killing an actual human being instead of a thing.” He shook his head. “I’m not a thing. You can’t kill me with no more thought than you’d give to squashing a bug.” His bottom lip began to tremble again. “It isn’t right. So you can just shoot me here, bitch. I’m not doing a death march for you.”

Roxie whipped the gun across his face, staggering him, then swung it back around for another blow. He fell back against the trunk and Roxie shoved the.38’s barrel deep inside his open mouth. She leaned close to him, spraying his sweat-sheened face with spittle as she pushed out a string of tightly enunciated words: “You fuck. You fat fucking fuck. You’re less than a bug. You’re nothing. Think I can’t make this hard, you fucking geek? Think I can’t make you beg? Start walking or you’ll find out just how low I can take you, bitch.”

She stepped away from him and grabbed him by the neck, shoved him toward the woods. He staggered in that direction, cried out, glanced once over his shoulder, and kept walking. He was broken. It was painfully easy to see. He would do whatever Roxie said from this point on, despite knowing there was no way to alter the final outcome of his desperate plight.

Rob followed them into the woods. This patch of wilderness was thick with wildly growing vegetation. There were leafy vines, plants, and bushes everywhere. He was thankful for his jeans and long sleeves. He couldn’t identify poison oak or ivy by sight, but there were enough prickly, strangely shaped leaves about to worry him. As always, Roxie just barged ahead, completely heedless of the potential dangers of nature. Rob hung back several feet, watching Roxie and the condemned man with a wary eye. He kept expecting Greg to bolt, maybe catch them by surprise and hope to get far enough away to seek cover in the woods. It was what Rob would do in his position. What other option was there? It would be futile, of course. The guy was fat and slow. Roxie was young and fit. She would pursue him, eventually take him down. Maybe she was hoping Greg would make a break for it. Hell, she would probably enjoy chasing her quarry through the woods, safe in the knowledge there was no way he could successfully elude her for long.