"I hope we find a motel pretty soon," Jody said. "I feel like I"ve been holding it forever."
"Should"ve gone at the gas station," Dad told her.
"Thanks, anyway. Gas station johns are the pits. I can hold it till we get to a motel."
"Let"s make sure we pick one that has a pool," Sharon suggested. "I"ve had my heart set on diving into a nice, chilly swimming pool ever since we left Indio."
"They probably all have pools," Dad said.
"I think we should also hold out for a place with cable TV," Andy said.
"If we hold out for too much," Jody muttered, "I"m gonna explode. It won"t be pretty."
Part Ten.
Simon Says.
Chapter Forty.
Okay. Okay. If the f.u.c.kin" b.i.t.c.h busted it, I"m gonna make her wish she was never born.
Ho! Bet she already wishes that!
"Testing, testing-one. two. Testing, testing-one, two."
Hey, bravo! It works. The way she whacked me in the head with the d.a.m.n thing, I figured sure she must"ve busted it. But she didn"t. That"s the good news. The bad news is, the batteries got dislodged while she was pounding me, so the recorder shut off and missed out on all the fun and games we had. Would"ve made some very interesting listening, if you know what I mean.
Too bad for you.
Me, I didn"t miss a thing. I was there.
The first thing that happened, she clobbered me three good ones on the side of my head with the recorder. That"s when you heard me shouting. It must"ve been the third whack that killed the thing.
Before she did any more damage to me, I got hold of her wrist. With my other hand, I gave her a pinch that made her squeal and let go of the recorder.
She turned out to be a real squealer. A real screamer, too. And a fighter.
She was terrific.
All sweaty and slick and hot. The fighting made her b.r.e.a.s.t.s jump around, and also made her squirm and slide around under me, rubbing me.
The best part was how her eyes bugged out each time I really hurt her. No, maybe that wasn"t ... the best part was when I gave her spasms of pain that made her clench up and grab me with her inside muscles.
It was great.
I called her Jody while I worked on her.
She never denied it.
h.e.l.l, maybe her name is Jody. I doubt it, though. It"d be too much of a coincidence. I might ask her when I take her out of the trunk. I"m sure she can"t talk, but she might be able to nod yes or no.
Anyway, calling her Jody made it better. I called her that mostly when I didn"t have a view of her face, and I pretended it was Jody under me. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn"t.
What did work every time was telling myself I"d have Jody under me just like this-the real Jody-soon. Maybe in a day or two, maybe in a week. And the real Jody would be exactly like this, only better.
She"ll have to go some to beat this gal. On a scale from one to ten, this gal was a nine.
Ho! Reminds me of our old Joy Scale. I"d forgotten all about that. For a while there, we rated every kill on the Joy Scale, but then we just sort of stopped doing it for no special reason.
The scale rates a combination of things, but mostly it takes into account how she looks and feels, plus how she responds to torture and rape and so on. (There was a scale for rating guys, too. It was started up by the fruits in our group. They called it the Joe Scale.) As I recall, we originally made up the Joy Scale one night when we were in Tom"s garage. It was about a week after we did Denise Dennison and her family. Somebody-Minnow, I think-said that on a Joy Scale of one to ten, Denise rated a fifteen. We gave him a lot of s.h.i.t about it. I mean, if a scale is from one to ten, you can"t go any higher than ten unless you"re some kind of a witless dork.
Actually, we later broke our rules and gave one gal a twelve on the Joy Scale. That"s because we all agreed that she was way far better than all the others. It"s true she was older than a lot of our kills, but she was in a cla.s.s by herself. Partly because of how gorgeous she was, but a lot of it had to do with how she acted-her terror and shame, the way she was so incredibly sensitive to pain, and how in spite of everything she seemed to relish every minute of the s.e.x. She begged us to stop hurting her, but she was always hot to have us f.u.c.k her. She would go for three of us at one time. She was so incredible that we kept her alive in the garage for about two months before we finally killed her. That was a record. Later we stripped off all her skin.
We cured and tanned it.
Tom got first pick of which sections he wanted. He took the best parts for himself, of course.
But I got a good section, myself. We all got at least something-keepsakes to remember her by.
In the wreck room, we sat around and partied and made whatever we wanted to out of her hide. I won"t get into what everybody made. For one thing, I don"t have all the time in the world. For another, I might gross you out. Wouldn"t wanta ruin your appet.i.te, or anything. What I made, though, was a nifty little mini-skirt which I dubbed my Connie Kilt, after Connie Baxter who had kindly provided the material.
Anyway, that"s about all I have to say about Connie, our one and only twelve.
It wouldn"t be fair to say we gave her the twelve because she was Tom"s mother. That"d be taking away from her. She deserved the twelve.
Let me think. That was about two years ago.
We haven"t had a twelve since, and it was only a while after Connie that we sort of forgot about the Joy Scale.
Maybe Jody will be another twelve. Or higher.
h.e.l.l, maybe she"ll be a major disappointment. I"ve built her up so high in my mind ... There"s something about her, though. Something. Just those few seconds with her on the gra.s.s Friday night-and then by the back wall. And being in her bed last night. And wearing her clothes. I don"t know.
It"s more than just how she looks. She has ... a quality. A freshness. Maybe it also has to do partly with how s.p.u.n.ky she was when we were after her.
Anyway, I can"t wait till she comes back from wherever she"s gone to.
I have to wait, of course.
Can"t very well nail her when I don"t know where she is.
I just hope she comes back soon.
I"ve gotta admit, there is something to be said for the joys of antic.i.p.ation. Every time I think about how it"s gonna be, I get a b.o.n.e.r that doesn"t quit.
From the feel of things, it"s just as well that Jody is out of town for a while. I have some recovering to do.
I did take a nap after getting done with the girl. I needed it in a bad way. In fact, I needed it so bad that I actually conked out right in the back seat of my car, and right on top of her. A very stupid move. But I was too worn out to care. With me pinning her down, she couldn"t go anywhere. Also, I figured she was in no condition to cause trouble. My main worry was that somebody might come along and find us, but that wasn"t a big enough worry to keep me awake.
I zonked.
As far as I know, n.o.body came along and looked in the car while I was dead to the world.
If the girl woke up, she was smart or scared or hurt enough to behave herself. I mean, she could"ve taken out my eyes. Could"ve chomped my neck the way I did Henry back there in Indio. Could"ve done a lot of things to me.
But I woke up in no worse shape than I"d been in when I finished with her.
Except that I was pretty d.a.m.n shocked to sit up and see how low the sun had sunk. I looked at the dashboard clock-7:35.
Great, huh? Too bad I didn"t sleep a little longer.
Maybe it is too bad, at that.
I mean, what if I"d slept another couple of hours? As it turned out, I got here with time to spare. Time to sit in the car and monkey with my recorder and get it working, with still plenty of time to play a little catch-up with my true-life adventure. And time left over.
Time to wait and worry.
But what if I"d slept longer out in the boonies? What if I woke up and there hadn"t been enough time left to make it back here for the deadline?
Would I have come, anyway?
I mean, by 10:30 or so, Lisa probably would"ve been beyond saving. (If not dead, at least too messed up to be worth the trouble.) So why risk everything?
Well, as I guess I"ve already figured out, tonight doesn"t really have much to do with saving Lisa. It has more to do with my own survival. If I don"t take down Tom and the other guys, I"m as good as dead.
So here we are.
I"m parked by the side of the road about fifty feet from Tom"s front gate. I don"t want him getting suspicious, so my plan is to wait until maybe five till ten before driving up to the gate.
That"s about ten minutes from now.
There"s a lot about the gang I didn"t get around to telling. For one thing, maybe I should"ve made a list of the names of everybody we killed. I know most of their names, but ... too bad. No time for that now.
A lot of things I could"ve told.
What I should"ve done was to talk while I was driving here. It was a pretty long drive, and I would"ve had time to get into a lot of stuff. The trouble was, I thought the b.i.t.c.h had busted my machine. It wasn"t till I got here and had a while to kill that I took a look at it and saw it was just that the batteries had gotten knocked loose.
While I"ve still got a few minutes, I should mention what I did to the gal after I woke up. That"s when we were still out in the desert and I"d just noticed how late it had gotten to be.
I was in too much of a hurry to bother with getting her dressed. n.o.body was around, anyway. I just dragged her out of the car, both of us b.u.t.t naked. She stayed asleep. Asleep or out cold, I don"t know which.
After she was out, I put her down on the ground. You should"ve seen her. She looked great, sprawled out there. The sunlight had a beautiful, reddish look to it that made her hair sparkle like gold and gave her skin a soft, ruddy glow.
She was just gorgeous.
I hate to say it, but I might never see anything that glorious again ever. Maybe that"s how come I want to spend some time talking about it, now.
Life has its moments of huge, miraculous beauty.
You want to pay attention when one of those moments comes along, and not miss it or treat it lightly. Because they don"t come along very often. And someday, one of them will be your last.
Oh, man.
I suddenly have this awful feeling I"m gonna die in Tom"s garage tonight.
If that happens, I"ll never get my chance at ... Guess it"ll be very good luck for Jody Fargo, huh?
Anyway, I"m running out of time.
What I did after putting the gal on the ground, I went and took Dusty"s rifle out of the trunk. Then I straddled her, my feet basically lined up with her t.i.ts. I raised the rifle overhead by its barrel and swung it down at her jaw.
As I swung, I shouted, "FORE!"
The b.u.t.t of the stock caught the side of her jaw, just the way it was supposed to.
It didn"t knock her jaw flying, but it sure did knock it sideways.
Oh, s.h.i.t, I"m running out of time.
I should"ve just thrown her back into the trunk after that, but like I said, she looked so great. I"m not one to miss out on life"s occasional moments of splendor, so I got down and f.u.c.ked her one last time. I could see her jaw swelling up even while I was pumping her. Then I threw her into the trunk. Then I got dressed and made tracks for Tom"s place.
The reason I broke her jaw was to make it so she wouldn"t say anything to Tom and the guys. The one thing I sure don"t want is for her to deny she"s Jody when we get in there.
Oh, man. Time to start moving.
Here we go.
If I don"t make it ... s.h.i.t, I had big plans for these tapes. They"re all in the car, here. Maybe I should"ve dropped them off at my apartment, or mailed them to someone ... I don"t know. Too late for any of that, though.
I"m coming up on the gate. It"s very well lighted and has a security camera. The monitor"s in the garage, and so is the b.u.t.ton they"ve gotta push to open the gate for me.
I"ll open the window and put this on my lap till ...
"Hi, guys. Right on time, huh? I"ve got Jody in the trunk. She"s alive and kicking, just like you wanted. And I killed the boy. It all went great!"
Okay, the gate is starting to swing open.
Here we go.
I don"t have to drive through.