Bryan Smith - The Killing Kind

He heard footsteps pounding up the staircase outside.

Shit!

He sliced through the last of the tape binding his left leg to the chair and got to his feet just as Missy and Julie came sprinting through the balcony door, dripping water and trailing wet sand behind them. Missy saw Rob unconscious on the floor and screamed.

“No! Rob!”

Julie pointed the gun at him. “Drop it.”

The adrenaline rush that had carried him this far began to ebb. He opened his hand and let the knife fall to the floor. He hated giving up his only weapon, but it was his only real option. Gun versus knife. No contest.

Missy dashed past him and dropped to her knees next to Rob.

Julie sneered. “Pick that chair up and sit the fuck down.”

Chuck snatched the chair up and slammed it down on the floor. He dropped into it and crossed his arms, glaring at Julie, the insolent curl of his mouth feeling like a silent dare. Go ahead, bitch, pull the trigger.

Julie smirked. “Hey, Chuck?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t you wanna know where Zoe is?”

Chuck felt a cold weight settle inside him. He sat very still. A feeling of dread like nothing he’d ever known worked its way through his bones and turned his blood to ice. He didn’t want to hear this. He knew the truth in his guts, but he didn’t want to hear it. It made him feel hopeless. Like nothing at all mattered anymore.

“She’s in the ocean, Chuck.”

Julie watched the contortions of his facial muscles and laughed. Her grin conveyed pure joy. She was dripping. Her denim cutoffs and halter were soaked through. A fading sheen of water glimmered on her bare scalp.

“Yeah. She’s in the ocean. And she’s not out for a swim.”

Chuck stared at her slender throat. She was so young. Still a child, really. But he ached to get his hands around her lovely neck and crush the life from her body. The muscles in his arms and legs were clenched to the point of pain. He was a bomb ready to go off and the girl saw that.

She was still smiling. “She’s chum, Chuck. You know? Fish food?”

Chuck’s breathing came faster and faster through his clenched teeth.

“We drowned her.”

A sob surprised him. He was perched on the verge of an explosion of deadly violence, but his grief for Zoe was instantaneous and powerful. Another sob shuddered out of him, followed by another and another.

We drowned her.

He knew she wasn’t lying to mess with his head. Her eager leer spoke the truth as plainly as her words. She and Missy had killed Zoe. Had held her under the water and laughed while she died. Chuck could only too clearly imagine the helpless, hopeless, awful horror of it from Zoe’s perspective.

Tears spilled down his cheeks.

Julie giggled. “I’ve killed a bunch of people lately, but I think Zoe was the most fun. If I was a guy, I would’ve gotten my rocks off, big-time.”

Annalisa had been whimpering quietly for the last several minutes, but the news of her friend’s terrible death rallied her. “You evil cunt! You evil, twisted, sick piece of fucking filth! Zoe was better than all of you.” Her voice grew thick with emotion, but stayed strong instead of turning shrill. Chuck feared for her, but he was proud of her, too. This took serious guts. “You’re not fit to lick the shit off her shoes, you bald fucking skank.”

A fast-moving cloud passed across Julie’s face, a subtle darkening that was there and gone in the space of a second. Then she was smiling again. Keeping a wary eye on Chuck, she approached the line of chairs and placed the barrel of the gun against Sean Hewitt’s forehead.

A low, cracking whine escaped Annalisa’s throat.

“This one’s your boyfriend, right?”

Annalisa shook her head. “No. No.”

Chuck watched Julie’s finger curl around the trigger and knew he had to do something. Sean’s whole body was shaking. Bound up in all that tape, he looked like a convict strapped to an electric chair. His bottom lip trembled uncontrollably as he stared up at Julie’s unforgiving face and struggled to voice a plea. Chuck decided he’d take a lunge at her. Enough of this shit. It had to stop. One more big breath to prime himself and-

Julie’s slender finger squeezed the trigger.

The gun’s bang caught Chuck off guard. He toppled sideways off his chair and saw a rain of blood and brains fly out the back of Sean Hewitt’s head. Julie laughed and kicked the dead man’s chair over as Annalisa screamed and screamed. Julie laughed some more, but when Annalisa kept screaming, the sound coming from her own throat shifted to mock the sound. She leaned down in front of Annalisa and screamed in her face. The ever-escalating volume of the crazy girl’s screams easily eclipsed the noise Annalisa was making, and soon the bound woman’s screams gave way to more subdued whimpers and sobs.

“Sean…Sean…”

Julie giggled.

Chuck hated that sound. She did it a lot and it made her sound like the brattiest little girl on the schoolyard.

She whipped the butt of the.38 across Annalisa’s burned cheek, making her scream again.

Yet another of those perverse giggles. “Sean’s dead, baby.” Julie leaned close to Annalisa again, mouth almost up against her ear as her tone turned lilting and mocking. “Dead, dead, dead.”

Chuck hadn’t moved from the floor after landing there in the wake of Sean’s murder. He was afraid to move. Not out of concern for his own life. That had stopped mattering the moment he knew Zoe was dead. But there was still the matter of revenge. These fuckers had to pay. And pay hard. But he wasn’t in a good position to make a play. Julie was preoccupied with Annalisa at the moment, but he knew any sudden movement would make that gun swing his way. He needed a distraction of some kind, something to divert her attention long enough to get himself in position again. And the second it happened-if it happened-he was gonna come at her with everything he had.

He would not hesitate.

Not this time.

He’d fucked up before and Sean was dead as a result.

Movement beyond where Julie was standing caught his attention. Missy had managed to rouse Rob. He was sitting up and she was kneeling next to him, a soothing hand at the back of his head. His head wobbled. He looked woozy.

Julie looked at them. “He gonna be okay?”

Missy’s attention stayed focused on Rob as she replied. “Yeah. I think so. He’s lucky his jaw isn’t broken.”

Julie and Missy kept talking. Missy’s enthusiasm for the evening’s ghoulish festivities seemed to have waned. Her man was hurt. That confused Chuck. So they were both fucking him? Weird. A psycho threesome. Whatever. They could all rot together in the same putrid grave once he was done with them. Happily damned forever after. They were still chatting as Julie flipped open the.38’s cylinder and knelt next to a big tote bag one of them had brought to the party. She reached into the bag and pulled out a white box. She opened the box and Chuck saw a glint of silver.

More bullets.

She picked up a few and slid one into an open chamber.

Now!

Chuck rolled almost soundlessly onto his stomach, braced his palms on the floor, pushed himself up, planted his feet, allowed his muscles the briefest of moments to coil, and launched himself at Julie’s back. Rob saw him coming and raised a shaking finger in warning, but it was too late. He slammed into Julie’s back, turning his head and drilling a shoulder between her shoulder blades. The gun flew from her hand and the handful of bullets went skittering across the hardwood floor. Someone screamed. Missy. Chuck drove Julie to the floor, pounding the wind from her as he landed on top of her with his full weight. He heard footsteps coming at him. Fast. Missy again. He surged upward, to his knees, and just managed to twist far enough to avoid a killing slash from the hunting knife. The blade scraped across his chest, raking his shirt open, and drawing a thin line of surface fire through his flesh. Blood streamed from the shallow wound as he cocked his fist back and unleashed another haymaker, this one connecting with the side of Missy’s head. He felt her ear mash flat beneath his fist and then she was stumbling across the room. She tripped over Rob and crashed to the floor.