Joe Haldeman - Work Done for Hire

At the first small road he pulled over to the shoulder to check on his quarry. He was too big to crawl through the van, so he chanced opening the rear doors. Her eyes were closed, but when he forced her mouth open and poured in some water, she coughed and gagged.

“That’s good. It won’t be long now.”

“Please,” she croaked. “Do… do whatever you want… .”

“Don’t worry. I will.” He eased the doors shut and went back toward the front of the van, but she started to scream. Annoying.

He went back to the rear doors, swung them open, and hit her head twice on the metal floor, just hard enough to stun her.

“Please. You only cause trouble for yourself.” He tore off a piece of duct tape and smoothed it over her mouth. Then he tore off a small piece and closed one nostril. “Wouldn’t that be an awful way to die?”

Before getting back into the van, he stepped into the forest, studying the loam. The van would leave tracks when he went off the road. If it rained harder, they would be obliterated, but the forecast called for the rain to taper off and stop in a couple of hours.

He studied his memory of the Googlemaps images. The topographical map showed a ridge to the east, and a gravel road in a few miles that ran up it. He would drive up there and check the soil and underbrush.

In the small cooler between the seats he’d stashed alternating quarts of beer and Coke. Took a Coke to be on the safe side. Wouldn’t do to be stopped in the middle of nowhere and forced to kill a state trooper. Two, probably.

He almost missed the unmarked gravel road and reversed back up to it. He drove up the rise and pulled over, out of sight from the paved road, and stopped to listen for a couple of minutes. No traffic; no sound but the ticking of his engine and the patter of raindrops.

He drove on slowly for about a mile and a half. The road ended at the grey ruin of a clapboard shack with a collapsed roof. Saplings grew out of the interior. The front door was missing and there was no glass in the windows.

Still, some indigent might have sought shelter there. He quietly shucked a shell into the 12-gauge and eased heavily out of the van, alert.

His eyes adjusted to the gloom inside the cabin. Sound of a rat or squirrel scurrying away. No other signs of life except spiders and millipedes. Woodsy smell with a touch of mildew.

The exposed beams under the part of the roof that was intact were strong enough to support his weight. He went back to the van and brought out the chains and hook and large cooler.

When he returned for the woman, her eyes were open, unblinking. She didn’t resist when he handcuffed her wrists together, and then her ankles.

Should he rape her? He had done that to the first two women, and one man, but there was no special joy in it, and it proved nothing; he already had total control over them, so sticking a protuberance into an opening was a trivial exercise. Besides, if he were interrupted and had to leave body parts behind, the fluid they found in her vagina would not be human in chemistry or biology.

He hung her up by the heels and stooped to remove the duct tape. “Don’t scream. There’s no one around to hear you, and you’ll just annoy me.”

She winced when he jerked the tape off, then worked her jaw and said, “This is the weirdest dream I’ve ever had.”

“It’s not a dream, Cooper.” He’d looked in her wallet. “It’s not even a nightmare.”

“I refuse to believe that. You’ll kill me, and then I’ll wake up.”

He almost smiled. “That’s a new way of coping. None of the others have said that.” He unrolled her Lycra shorts and left them bunched around her knees. “Most girls your age shave around the pubic region. The bathing suit part, at least.”

“I’m sure you’re an expert.” Her voice was conversational but quaking. “You can say ‘cunt.’ Under the circumstances.”

“Heavens, no. I don’t know you well enough.” He sliced her T-shirt from neck to waist and then cut both sleeves to remove it. She was wearing a red sports bra. He snapped the elastic but left it alone.

“How many… how many others?”

“Twelve; you’ll be lucky thirteen. The newspapers call me Hunter. You haven’t heard of me?”

“I—I never read the paper. Or watch the news.”

“Oh. Is it too depressing?” He made small nicks over each kneecap and watched the blood trickle down. “If you read the newspapers, you might have thought twice before bicycling alone out in the woods.”

“My boyfriend and parents know where—”

“I’m sure they do. We’ll be in another state before they get around to calling the police. You’ll be in quite another state.” He wiped one stream of blood with his forefinger and tasted it. “Type O, I believe?”

“Look. If this is a gag—”

“There may be gagging.” He stuck out his tongue and licked the trickle of blood from the other leg in one slow sweep. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You are delicious.”

He went outside and came back with a large plastic bucket with a lid. He pried off the lid and put the bucket on the floor underneath her head. Then he sat down cross-legged, facing her eye to eye.

“Carolyn Cooper. You must bike a lot.”

“No. Yes.” Tears were running down her forehead.

“Your thighs and calves are very muscular. But not too lean. Do you go to school?”

She shook her head no.

“Church? Do you go to church?”

“You… United Southern Baptist.”

“Southern Baptist. So you’ll be in heaven soon.”

She cried harder and tried to wipe her nose on her shoulder. He held up a Kleenex and said, “Blow.” She wouldn’t.

“I bet you’re still a virgin. Are you?”

She nodded slowly. “And yet you say ‘cunt.’ How people have changed since I was a boy.” He reached up and she cringed away, and so started to swing and bob, a complex pendulum.

He waited until she stopped. “What if I promised to let you go if you let me make love to you? Have sex. Here on the floor?”

She glared at him and shook her head, just an inch, back and forth.

“If you don’t, I’ll kill you.”

“You will anyhow. You godless bastard.”

He stared into her eyes, brow furrowed in thought. “It’s a complicated moral dilemma—for you, not for me—though you may be too upset to appreciate it right now.”

He held up one finger. “You refuse to have sex with me and I kill you. You go to heaven. If you were headed there anyhow.”

Two fingers. “You let me make love to you and I keep my word, and let you go. Technically, you sinned the sin of fucking—but is your God so petty he would send you to Hell over that? If so, I would posit that you don’t have a snowball’s chance of getting through life without doing something that will send you there.”

Three fingers. “You let me make love to you and I kill you anyhow. As you have suggested. I would concede that that could be bad. Go directly to Hell, do not collect two hundred dollars.” He laughed. “You’re looking at me as if I were crazy. Haven’t you ever heard of Monopoly?”

He shook his head at her crying. “There is a fourth, necrophilia. I could kill you first and then have sex with your remains. But that would be sick. I’ve never done that, not really. They were always alive when I started.”

He stood, set the blade on her abdomen, and pressed slightly. “The last time, I cut his throat and then opened him like this .” With his finger, not the blade, he swept down from pubic bone to sternum. She screamed.

He sat back down. It took all his strength to hold her head still while he replaced the duct tape.

“Please try not to pee. That doesn’t help anything.” Instead of cutting her throat, he just opened a carotid artery, which resulted in a mess. He must have saved only half the blood, the rest of it spurting all around as she struggled. By the time there was a regular flow into the bucket, the floor of the musty room looked like a macabre Jackson Pollock painting.