Jude Hardin - Fire and ice

“She’s very attractive,” K-Rad said.

“Yeah, and she’s right. I really do need to quit smoking.”

“You guys in college?”

“Yeah, CH State, but I’m planning on transferring to the University of Florida when I get my associate’s degree.”

“Sounds like a good plan.”

Tyler dropped his cigarette on the pavement and crushed it with the toe of his sandal. “I better get on in there before she starts freaking,” he said.

K-Rad pulled the ice pick from his pocket, gripped it tightly, and jammed it into the side of Tyler’s throat. Blood pulsed skyward, as though being shot from a squirt gun. Must have punctured an artery, K-Rad thought. Tyler fell to the sidewalk, twitched a few times, and then lay still.

“Now she’s really going to start freaking,” K-Rad said. He dragged Tyler’s limp body behind a stand of ornamental shrubs and walked toward his car to get the Berettas.

Terri climbed into the back of the GTO and got down on the floorboard, as Matt had instructed. Matt switched on the radio and turned it to the news channel, just in case Shelly was unleashing whatever hell she had in mind. If a bulletin came on about an ax murderer loose in a school or a department store or something, at least Matt would know where to go.

And what he had to do.

Because every person she hurt… or killed… was on him.

For bringing Mr. Dark into her life.

And for letting her walk out of the factory.

Matt listened to the radio program, but the only story being broadcast at the moment was from an economist, something about the possibility of interest rates going up. The usual boring crap.

“I need to pee,” Terri said.

“What?”

“I gotta go. Really bad.”

They were currently on a stretch of two-lane blacktop lined with pine trees on both sides. The closest bathroom was at the Retro, still several miles away, and Matt wanted Terri to stay in the car when they got there.

“There’s nowhere to go,” Matt said. “You’re just going to have to hold it. Or pee your pants.”

“I can’t hold it much longer, and I’m not going to pee my pants. Pull over to the side of the road and let me out. It’ll only take a minute.”

Matt cursed under his breath. He eased to the shoulder, braked to a stop, and put the car in neutral.

11:22 a.m.

Why the hell are they stopping here? Shelly wondered. Then she saw the petite young woman climbing out of the passenger’s side door. He’s going to do it to her right there in the trees. Can’t even wait to get back to her place. She should have known he was just like all the rest of the assholes she’d been with.

Matt had his eyes on the bitch and paid no attention as Shelly sped by. No worries about him seeing and recognizing her car. Shelly knew where Matt and his little chickadee were headed.

The only thing out this way was the Retro.

The Retro. Hmm. The day care could wait. She’d take out the parents first-then there would be no one to get in her way. It was close to lunchtime, and they’d all be heading to the Retro.

Heads will roll!

She laughed out loud.

Matt didn’t see the driver of the car as it passed… but he recognized it from the Nitko parking lot.

And there was nobody alive at Nitko to drive it.

Except one person.

Matt jammed the transmission into first gear and burned rubber back onto the highway. Terri was safer here than where he was going.

Shelly pulled into the Retro’s lot, found a parking place, and killed the engine. She popped the hatch and reached into the cargo area and removed the long and slender nylon pouch from one of the two tailgating chairs she kept back there. She slid Matt’s ax and the sawed-off shotgun into the pouch, walked inside, and made a beeline to the ladies’ room. It was a large restroom, very nice, with eight stalls and a triple granite-top vanity. There was a young woman, college age, standing at the mirror touching up her makeup.

“How’s it going?” Shelly said.

“Great, except my stupid boyfriend would rather stand outside and smoke cigarettes than come in here with me.”

“Men.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. Hey, what’s in the pouch?”

Shelly pulled the ax out, and in a single swift motion buried the blade in the young woman’s skull. The sound of the sharpened steel breaking through bone and tearing into brain tissue made Shelly burst into laughter. Or maybe she was crying-she couldn’t really tell. She dragged the body across the marble floor to the stall farthest from the door, positioned it on the toilet, and closed the door.

There were still seven stalls to go!

K-Rad was on his way back inside when an old Pontiac GTO screeched to a stop at the sidewalk. A man got out of the car and limped toward him. The man looked like a nightmare, his clothes black with soot and his face and left shoe crusted with blood.

K-Rad assessed the filthy man. “What the-”

As K-Rad was saying the, the man clouted him with an uppercut to the chin. The impact caused K-Rad to bite his tongue, his incisors slicing down hard and completely severing the tip of the highly vascular and highly innervated organ. Blood gushed from his mouth, and he started dancing around trying to stop the flow with his hand. The pain radiated through his jaw and to the bones in his ears.

“Fuck!” he said. “You made me bite my fucking tongue off.” Uck! Ew ade ee ite i ucking ung off.

The man came forward with his fist cocked. Who the fuck was this idiot? K-Rad knew it wasn’t someone from the plant, because everyone there was dead now. Anyone who had avoided being shot had surely died from the explosion. Nobody could have survived that.

The man punched swift and hard, but K-Rad somehow managed to dodge the blow.

Matt could see boils on K-Rad’s face oozing with thick pus the color and consistency of custard, and slimy brown earthworms crawled in and out of his eye sockets like living strands of lo mein. K-Rad ran out into the parking lot, bright red blood dripping down his rotting chin. Matt followed, limping as fast as he could, but K-Rad darted behind a minivan and Matt lost sight of him. Sirens wailed in the distance as more firefighters and rescue personnel headed to Nitko. Matt hobbled forward a few steps, looked between some cars for K-Rad, but didn’t see him anywhere.

A muffled gunshot crackled, and a bullet whistled past Matt’s left ear. K-Rad stood forty feet away with his elbows propped on the roof of a light blue compact automobile, a Camry or a Sentra or one of the other generic sedans from overseas. He fired a second time and a third, and both those rounds missed their mark, but the fourth time K-Rad pulled the trigger Matt felt a sizzling-hot bolus of lead burrow deep into his left shoulder. The shock and pain from the bullet’s impact, along with everything else that had happened over the past few hours, caused Matt to have a momentary lapse of consciousness. He fell dizzily to the pavement and lay flat on his back, clutching the fresh wound with his right hand.

K-Rad walked over with the pistol and aimed it straight at Matt’s face. “I don’t know who you are, but you just fucked with the wrong motherfucker, motherfucker.”

Matt stared Radowski down, resigned to his fate now but unwilling to beg or whimper or flinch, unwilling to give this poor excuse for a human being the satisfaction of seeing him sweat.

“Fuck you,” Matt said.

K-Rad laughed. He pulled the trigger, but the gun did not fire. While he was reaching into his backpack and pulling a second identical pistol out and jacking a round into the chamber, Matt felt something uncomfortable pressing against his right buttocks.