Ka-SPLAs.h.!.+ The moonlight rippled spectacularly.

Then they were driving away, off into the warm, star-chipped night. "Wendy, look!" Rena celebrated, bending over in the pa.s.senger seat. "I found Walt's d.i.c.k!"

So she had; somehow, Walt's severed member had found its way to the footwell. "Now I remember. J brought it along to diddle with while we were driving out." Rena picked it up and, ever the comedian, slid back her blue-leather skirt and held Walt's now seriously shriveled c.o.c.k to her c.l.i.toris, spreading her trim legs. "Look, Wendy! I've got a p.e.n.i.s! I'm a man!"

Wendfyn rolled her eyes behind the wheel. "You're so silly sometimes. Honestly." She took the wizened tiling and flipped it out the window, where eventually it would be eaten by possums.

Wendlyn expertly plunged the dual Doc Johnson vibrators in and out of Rena's off-pink v.u.l.v.a and r.e.c.t.u.m, licking the swollen c.l.i.toris. Rena squirmed, sighing through her grin, as Claudius, the largest of her three pet hognose snakes, slithered about her belly and pointed b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Rena was possessed of some rather left-field eccentricities, several of which Wendlyn was hard-pressed to tolerate: Heineken douches. Bull Frog Stuffing, electric ben-wa b.a.l.l.s up her a.s.s whilst in public. Plus snakes. They'd met at North County General, where Rena was a floor receptionist Wendlyn, a Cla.s.s I nurses' aide, caught Rena masturbating in the janitorial closet one night, with a polypropylene Bacti-Capall culture tube and hemostats clipped to her nipples. "Ooops," Rena had said. Instead of filling out an employee negligence report Wendlyn had sealed their friends.h.i.+p by immediately planting her big blond pubis in Rena's face. Their careers, though, had ended rather expeditiously. Rena had been fired for stealing an array of controlled Pharmaceuticals from the nurses' station, while Wendlyn, shortly thereafter, had received her walking papers for "gross s.e.xual misconduct upon the hospital premise." A staff doctor had pulled back a privacy curtain in an end ICU cove, to discover the ever-curious Wendlyn fastidiously fellating a male critical coma patient. "I wanted to see if a brain-dead person could come," she'd explained. "You're fired," the doctor had replied.

Oh. well. Nevertheless, their friends.h.i.+p remained, and to make a long exposition short, they soon found a vivid compatibility in their ravenous s.e.xualities as well as their sociopathies. In no time at all, they were murdering men at about a rate of one a month, through all manner of demented imagination: gastric lavage with Clorox, non-anesthetic live dissection, brain surgery with power tools, and acts of genital mayhem that could only be described as "bigtime." Once they'd catheterized a bartender and filled his bladder with 5W 30-grade motor oil. then ice-picked his lower abdomen to watch the oil ooze out. Another time Wendlyn was blowing some dolt they'd picked up at the races; Rena had clipped off his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es at the precise moment of his climax. Once they'd even dissected a p.e.n.i.s, on a living "patient" removing all the skin and the entire s.c.r.o.t.u.m, after which Rena had clipped off the raw shaft a quarter inch at a time. This guy had screamed so loud they'd had to put cotton in their ears! One pickup had gotten rude with them, actually hailing such invectives as: "b.i.t.c.hes! Lesbos! Psychopaths!" Wendlyn had opened his a.n.u.s with a pair of rectal retractors stolen from the hospital, while Rena, with more than a smidgen of difficulty, had inserted Tiberius, one of her pet hognose snakes, into the offender's bowel. Tiberius had churned away for quite some time in there, before finally giving up the ghost while their unmannerly companion had screamed shock-eyed and blue in the face. "Poor Tiberius," Rena regretted. She'd finished the man off by carefully drilling a shallow hole in his skull with a 1/4-inch carbon bit, then slowly inserting long carpet needles and autopsy pins into the hole. Genital electrocution, ground-gla.s.s and/or boiling bacon grease enemas, ice picks in the ears and/or eyes, Coca-Cola blood transfusions, total body flensing, and, of course, what Rena referred to as "d.i.c.k-scarfing." Nothing would get a fella screaming faster and louder than having his pride and joy and family jewels nimbly chewed off by a pair of crazier-than-s.h.i.+thouse-rats militant feminists. No, sir. You name it Wendlyn and Rena did it much to the disconsolation of many a man, and all in the name of their righteous ideology, to vindicate roughly seventy centuries of subjugation.

Plus, it was fun, at least from the standpoint of a clinical sociopath.

One thing they never considered, though, was the possibility that sooner or later they might pick the wrong guy...

Larry seemed a little fat and doty; pickings were slim some nights. He provided at least the necessary prerequisites; your typical gaping, gawping, l.u.s.tful c.o.c.khound/ nutchase/Feel-'Um-f.u.c.k *Um-And-Forget-'Um Man. At the bar, Larry's eyes had been all over them, and eventually so had his hands. He'd plied them with drinks and smothered them with overtly suggestive remarks, foremost of which was: "What say we get outa this gin joint? I could show you two babes a really hot time." He'd actually winked then, and gave Rena's little rump a pat. Wendlyn smirked. A hot time? she thought. We'll see who shows who a hot time. She got wet just thinking about it.

Back at the house, Larry had offered no protestations whatsoever to Rena's "trick" cuffs.

"I'm easy," he'd chuckled as they'd cuffed him down. Naked, he looked like dough stretched out on the bed, beer gut no muscles, but... Hmmm, Wendlyn considered, appraising his works, which, despite their flaccidity, looked very promising. Rena sat at once on his face, her sleek back to the wall, as Wendlyn perked him up with her hand.

"Jesus Christ!" Rena delighted. "You're gonna need a shoe horn to sit on all of that!" You ain't kidding, Wendlyn thought plying the hardening tube of flesh. Larry's genitals bloomed; Wendlyn smiled giddily. "This looks like something that should hang in a smokehouse." Larry easily sported a twelve-inch root with the girth of a pony bottle.

Wendlyn reveled in its shape, its colossal well-formed glans, fat veins, and a urethral ingress big enough to admit her pinkie. Even his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es were monsters: heavy and hot and large as Jumbo Grade-A eggs. Wendlyn wasted no time in mounting this wonderful gorged pole, which actually nudged the cap of her cervix each time she rode down. She and Rena faced each other now, both murmuring and rolling their eyes at Larry's oral and copulatory prowess.

"His tongue must be as big as his c.o.c.k," Rena was very happy to relate, gritting her teeth through a lascivious grin. "Feels like it's going right up my f.u.c.kin' uterus!"

"He can f.u.c.k too," Wendlyn a.s.sured, grinning much the same. This was so gooda"so slow and luscious and hot; she was actually drooling. f.u.c.king, my foot, she thought. This isn't f.u.c.king, it's deep-well drilling, and Larry Boy s about to tap the pool.

Indeed, Larry's p.e.n.i.s felt more akin to one of those extra-long tubes of chocolate-chip cookie dough; this thing was squeezing her g-spot her flat against her anterior wall. s.h.i.+t she didn't even know she had a g-spot until now. Wendlyn's reproductive orifice was no stranger to phalli of above-average proportions, but thisa" thisa"was ridiculous! That Miller Pony-Bottle girth stretched her v.u.l.v.a out to a tight delicious bright-pink rim, plowing steadfast as a derrick wheel, while the length continued to plumb the absolute extremities of the tract of her womanhood. She felt skewered: Wendlyn-ka-bob. Quaking multiple o.r.g.a.s.ms went off deep in her loins like subsurface demolition. Her v.a.g.i.n.a pulsed and pulsed, wringing pleasure out of her nerves much the same as a hand wringing milk out of a cow's gorged teat. Exhausted then, she switched positions with Rena, who immediately exclaimed "It's like f.u.c.king a rolling pin, Wendy!" as she inserted the elephantine p.e.n.i.s into her slick bald s.n.a.t.c.h. Wendlyn found no exaggeration in Rena's previous affirmation; when she pressed her own downy-blond s.n.a.t.c.h to Larry's face, a tongue of utmost dimensions delved at once up into the beslickened furrow. She came again in minutes, leaving Larry's face s.h.i.+ny as wet sh.e.l.lack, and then Rena, too, tensed up and shuddered in wave upon wave of deepest o.r.g.a.s.m, at which time Larry's own crisis unloosed, warm gouts of s.e.m.e.n fat as worms rocketing up into the squirming purse of flesh. Rena's face strained, her hands opened on his belly, as she squealed in glee, "He's coming in me like a f.u.c.king garden hose!"

"Whew!" Larry replied, laxing back against the handcuffs. "That was one dandy nut. I knew you girls were hot"

"And we're gonna get a lot hotter," Wendlyn promised. Larry didn't notice Rena leaving the room, too engrossed via the next distraction: the application of Wendlyn's mouth to the flaccid, veined p.e.n.i.s. It didn't remain flaccid long, though. In only minutes, back to turgid life it sprang. Wendlyn 69'd him, already anxious to feel that long tongue slide back up into her groove's salt-wet depths. To her surprise, however, and in an ultimate display of male bravado, the tongue bypa.s.sed this usual fissure and forced its way instead into the tight, flinching b.u.t.ton of her r.e.c.t.u.m. It took quite a man to offer his tongue to this less-dainty orifice and, likewise, it took quite a woman to sufficiently perform f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o upon a c.o.c.k like Larry's. She could scarcely get the glans in her mouth much less the tumid shafta"she'd have better luck sucking a summer squas.h.!.+ Eventually she took to drawing her pinkie in and out of the big peehole, the sensation of which Larry t.i.ttered at as his visage remained vised in the cleft of Wendlyn's b.u.t.tocks.

But when Rena reappeared, she climbed off. "You said you wanted a hot time, right, Larry?'

"Oh, yeah, oh, yeah," Larry concurred. His p.e.n.i.s bobbed, like a ludicrous puppet.

"Well how's this for hot?' Rena stepped into the light wearing sungla.s.ses, for a reason that would become apparent in another moment. In her left hand she held a match. And in her right hand she held- "OH, MY G.o.d!" Larry justifiably screamed.

a"a blowtorch.

"This should be real hot, Larry," Wendlyn proposed. She pressed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s together in sheer, erotic delight "And 1 mean real real hot..."

Rena lit the blowtorch and adjusted its flame down to a hissing, white-blue point. "Hot enough for you, Larry?' she inquired, applying the 1200-degree-plus flame to the tip of his d.i.c.k. The tip shriveled at once, like a smoking marshmallow. Ditto as for the big t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es.

Rena languidly roved the torch flame back and forth across the crisping s.c.r.o.t.u.m, while Larry screamed so hard the whites of his eyes turned red in hemorrhage, and thrashed with such force the bed rocked up and down on its legs.

Wendlyn waved away at the stinking smoke, laughing along like a naked blond cheerleader from h.e.l.l. Rena next bore the flame down on the center of Larry's flabby chest straddling him as he bucked horselike in agony better left undescribed. The flame burned down down down, disintegrating flesh and bone alike, opening up a great black smoking pit in which Larry's heart cooked, then broiled, then collapsed to ash.

So much for Larry.

"Yeah," Wendlyn remarked, grinning down through the odiferous smoke. "I think that was hot enough for him."

Wendlyn sauntered nude to the garage, to fetch a dropdoth.

Her big orbicular b.r.e.a.s.t.s bounced quite nicely with each step, and her big smile made no secret of her satisfaction. Chalk up another one for womanhood, she thought. One more greedy, l.u.s.tful, p.u.s.s.y-hungry woman-exploiter for the deep six. Back in the bedroom, though, she froze.

"What the.., f.u.c.k?"

The bed lay empty. At first she thought Rena must already have unlocked the corpse, but a closer glance invalidated this suspicion. Each set of handcuffs remained secured to the bed's bra.s.s rails, yet each set was clearly missing its counterpart. In other words, the cuffs had been broken...

And above the lingering smoky stench of fried human flesh. Wendlyn smelled something deeper, more pungent Like fresh sewage enlaced with something else...

Then she glanced to the lefta"

Glanced downa"

And screamed.

Out of the room's shadow, Rena lay sprawled in the corner, gla.s.sy-eyed in death. Some heinously sharp instrument had lain open her abdomen, and from this gaping insult most of her lower g.i. tract had been yanked out. s.h.i.+ny pink intestines formed squiggles on the floor, like queer garlands. Kidneys, spleen, and pancreas glistened. Worse, though, was that Rena's adorable, pointy little b.r.e.a.s.t.s were... gone. Bitten off. And the same too for that silk-smooth hairless pubis: gnawed out from betwixt the askew legs.

Beady eyes glinted. From the shadow, the huge angular head lowered as similarly huge jaws spread, baring white teeth the size of masonry nails. Rena's face was then eaten off the skull as a child might eat tile icing off a cupcake.

A cascade of warm amber pee flowed freely down Wendlyn's plush legs. Her mouth froze open. She couldn't move. Then the voice croaked, but it was no human voice at alla"just a ragged, unearthly suboctave, a succession of rasps, rattling like phlegm.

The voice said this: "You picked the wrong guy to luck with tonight, baby."

By now Larry had transformed to near completeness, and this ancient and mystical metamorphosis had fully repaired Rena's earlier handiwork with the blowtorch. Three lone facts stood before Wendlyn now which, despite their impossibility, she could not deny. One, Larry was alive. Two, he was p.i.s.sed off. And, three, he was a werewolf.

Wendlyn gulped.

Correction. He was a big werewolf, and in more ways than one. No reckoning would save her now, nor would any defensive action, and certainly no plea. Despite her understandable horror, however, and the paresis from which she could not release herself, the cogent agreement sparkled in her mind. Yes. Yes, you 're right. We definitely picked the wrong guy to f.u.c.k with tonight.

So much for counter-exploitation.

The creature rose, the vulpine face grinned. Well-hung as a man, Larry was even bigger as a lycantrope, the evidence of which now bloomed in obviousness, the doglike sheath sliding back showing glinting, s.h.i.+ny pink. Poor Wendlyn easily acknowledged the deduction: Now that Larry had eaten, he was ready to get down to some serious exploitation of his own.

The Baby.

Rosser kind of joggled on the bus, rocking in his seat. It was a county bus, he presumed, Russell County, one of the poorest so it made sense that the coach lacked air-conditioning. He felt like he was cooking in his jeans, his soiled Christian Dior s.h.i.+rt adhered to him by sweat, his feet baking in K-Mart sneakers. He'd only lived in Luntville a week, chased here, he guessed, by either penance or bad karma The heat seemed to be chasing him too. The bus rocked and rocked.

Maybe I'm actually in h.e.l.l, he considered. h.e.l.l can't possibly be any hotter than this. Nor its population any uglier. The bus driver looked like Lurch. The big guy in overalls in back looked like Shrek, and the woman sitting across could easily have been a female version of Don King.

Everything beyond the window appeared as desolate as his thoughts. Fall guy, Patsya"

call it what you want. I got screwed and I can't unscrew myself. Rosser was a project manager for a major construction companya"er, had been. Now he was a fleeing felon.

Ordinarily he might get a year or two in jail and be out on good behavior ate a few months, when illegal cost-cutting lead to deaths. But this? It had been Barren and Franks, company's owners, who'd charged the client for the firewalls they hadn't really installed.

Same with the extra load-bearing beams in the center of the complex. The client paid for ita"they had to, via state building codesa"but Barren and Franks had "forgotten" to include these items in the actual construction of the sitea"and pocketed the money.

Hence, little more than a week after the day-care center had opened, a roof strut had collapsed, severing a gas line, and the center had exploded like something carpet-bombed.

Three dozen toddlers burned up like bacon, not to mention a number of adults. Barren and Franks had greased the right palms, forged the right invoices and deposit receipts, and bribed some "eyewitnesses," and that was that.

Business degree from Georgetown, minor in architecture. A brand-new Audi, and $150,000-a-year salary. All gone. All up in smoke. I'm not up s.h.i.+t s Creek without a paddle, he thought. I'm in the middle of the s.h.i.+t Sea without a boat.

Rosser beat the warrant-issuing deputy sheriffs by a half hour, went to the company office, cleaned out the safe, and hitchhiked out of town. He kept hitching till he was halfway across the county, then Greyhounded here, here being Luntville, in southern Virginia, which made the little burg in Green Acres look like Harvard Yard. G.o.d Almighty, he'd thought when he first arrived. It was another world, a secret world within the Land of Opportunity. Generations of families who didn't know what education was.

Mind-boggling poverty. Unemployment. Desperation, adultery, and alcoholism as the status quo.

A man sitting next to Rosser grinned at him in a way that seemed knowing. The grin was black. Teeth like pegs of licorice. The guy had greased-stained jeans and a similarly stained gas-station s.h.i.+rt with the name tag COREY. Shoulder-length stringy hair hung down from the grime-edged REMINGTON baseball hat. He just kept grinning, right at Rosser.

Is this the guy from Deliverance? Rosser flinched, tried not to meet his eyes. Why was the man staring?

"You runnin'?'

"Pardon me?" Rosser asked.

"Never mind." Corey p.r.o.nounced "mind" as "mand." "I was, awhile's back. Couldn't hack it no more. Wife got fat, baby whined all night like a bad water pump. One day I'se blinked and thunk what the f.u.c.k did you git yer *self into, you moe-ron? So I split.

Couldn't stay in Stone Gap. Shee-it, wife's family lived there-if I'd even started talkan'

'bout divorce'n s.h.i.+t her f.u.c.ked-up kin'd come after me with pitchforks'n shovels." The rotten grin, somehow, brightened. "The f.u.c.kin' was good, though. At least good enough to knock the pig up."

Invigorating conversation, Rosser thought.

The bus banged over a pothole. "Anyways, that's how I'se landed here." The grin, more of the grin. "Just like you, I suppose. Am I right?'

"Not altogether," Rosser admitted. "What makes you think I'm . . . running?'

A phlegmy chuckle. "Come on. That white b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt? Looks like a business s.h.i.+rt that you're just wearing cos it's all ya got. Ain't no businessmen in these parts. Ain't no business."

Suddenly Rosser felt foolish in the office s.h.i.+rt, a sore thumb. "You could say I recently elected to relocate . . ." He didn't want to talk at all, but the question came unbidden, irresistibly: "How-how long ago was this?"

The grin jolted forward. "Was what?"

"How long ago did you leave your wife and child? Er, I mean, how long have you been here, in this area?'

"Six, seven years thereabouts."

Sounded promising, at least. If this redneck grease monkey started a new life in Luntville, so could Rosser. Who would look for him here? The beard was already growing in, the hair lengthening, dyed dirty-blond. The couple hundred grand he'd taken out of the safe could go a long, long time in an economy like this. He'd get some under the table job somewhere, become part of the scenerya" and part of a town and population that no one gave a s.h.i.+t about. This was his chance.

And better than Corey's, right? Rosser had left no wife and child behind, and he had some smarts and an education that would covertly come in handy, so long as he laid low.

Things could be worse, he realized.

Optimism couldn't hurt.

"So you'rea"what?a"a mechanic?' Rosser inquired next.

Corey stunk like a cross between a Jiffy Lube and an armpit. "Sh.o.r.e, down at Hull's garage next to the general store," the black grin answered. "I just do my job, get my paycheck, mind my own business. Works out just fine, ya know?'

Just another example of what Rosser needed reinforced. A person could start a new life, an anonymous life, and leave the past behind. Certainly Rosser hoped he never saw Corey and his rotten grin ever again, but he did appreciate the confidence of his example. The past was the past Fate had given him a new future, and Rosser was determined to make the best of it.

The s.h.i.+t-hole rooming house he lived in was miles from the nearest store; hence, the bus ride. Store-brand tortilla chips and a can of spaghetti would be dinner. And at the dollar store he'd picked up several cheap t-s.h.i.+rts and pairs of socks. He was serious about this.

Thus far it seemed that the landlady approved of him: Mrs. Doberman (that's right Doherman, and her name suited her). "A fine, fine young man," she'd commented this morning when he'd left. "So intelligent and polite... and so handsome!" He'd get a radio soon, a TV. gradually accrue the barest necessities. The more he thought about it the better he felt.

"Check it out Hoss." Corey said. At the next stop off State Route 154, a heavyset woman clodded on, grocery bag under one arm, a baby under the other. She turned around, clumsily manipulating herself, as though preparing to sit down required some urgent consideration. Corey further remarked, "Jesus Christ is it gonna take all ruckin' day for her to sit her fat a.s.s down?' Eventually, the woman sat down in the bench seat right behind Lurch, and the bus... Lurched on.

White Trash Nation, Rosser mused, eyeing her. Did the woman smile at him? I hope not.

She smiled at Corey, he convinced himself. The woman was hideous. Broken teeth, crooked nose, frizzed hair the color of dirty dishwater. The baby hung off her left side; he couldn't really see it save for a pudgy, dirty leg sticking out across the area of s.p.a.ce that ordinarily would've been called a lap. Wet, glurpy noises could be heard, however: baby sounds. Peeking from the top of the grocery bag were Twinkies, donuts, a six-pack of Keystone.

Rosser wasn't sure what Corey whispered under his breath, but he thought it was: "I'm so h.o.r.n.y I could spit on the floor and hump the spit."

Her bloodshot eyes darted quickly to him again, then quickly away: a White Trash flirt.

No, no, the glance was to Corey, to Corey.

Corey slapped him on the back. "Looks like this is your lucky day, hull, Hoss? s.h.i.+t if she ain't got the hots for ya."

"Not for me, for you. Either that or she knows you."

"Oh, 1 know the look." An elbow jab. "But do me a favor. Lemme have some sloppy seconds, will ya? Shee-it, bet she'd do us both fer free on account she's hot for you. Her name's Maxine, by the way."

"So you do know her," Rosser said.

"Any h.o.r.n.y fella with an extra sawbuck knows her. She's the bottom of the barrel p.u.s.s.y in Luntville. Just plop the fat b.i.t.c.h down on the floor, spread those legs, spit on that pie, hold yer nose, and stick it in. Hump it hard, hump it fast, and fill her up. A nut's a nut, ya know? And she don't make ya use none of that condom s.h.i.+t." Another comradely slap to the back. "Not a bad lay if ya keep yer eyes closed and don't breathe." Corey laughed loud enough to turn several heads, just not Maxine's.

So. The local prost.i.tute, Rosser a.s.sessed. More of the social dynamic, however pitiful.

Rosser could not fathom the man desperate enough to have s.e.xual congress with this human beast. Her tace looked puffed, s.h.i.+ny in sunburn. Moles like raisins studded the roll of fat around her neck. Indeed, here was definitive white trash.

Four-foot-eleven in her flip-flops, and an easy one-seventy on the scale. The enormous b.r.e.a.s.t.s looked flattened in the bland sundress, laying atop a distended junk-food belly.

Cellulite-runneled legs wide as fifty-pound sacks of rice, with skin the color of, well...

rice. Her hair could've been a floor mop stained pitch-black. The outlines of lopsided nipples the size of beer coasters ghosted through the top's shabby fabric.

He still couldn't see any details of the baby.