Страница 39 из 166
Now Re
He was clawing at his own face when Barb, no longer wailing, charged back from the kitchen, brandishing the biggest meat cleaver Re
Victor had threatened her with the cleaver once; that was how she’d known where to find it.
And Barb had, in fact, seen too many monster movies. Especially the ones about psychos and kitchen implements; you could get every-damned-thing on cable nowadays. She hacked and chopped and slashed and hollered and only nailed Re
The grabby Victor-thing began falling to pieces faster than a clay vase run through on the wheel with a cutoff needle. Tearing a suffocat-ing creeper of skin free from his mouth, Re
“Barb-you cut me open, goddammit!”
“I missed, honey, I’m sorry, okay? That thing was all over the place!”
She helped him stand. He was wobbly, unused to needing help, to being nearly beaten. Their feet buried in the desiccated meat on the floor, she felt him shake. He hugged her tight and genuinely.
“I know. I know, babe…but that thing is ole you-know-who again.”
“Can’t be. No way.” She pressed her face into his neck, not looking. He lifted a scrap of now-inanimate flesh and turned it to the faint light, so Barb could see the tattoo. A cherubic, comic book devil-child looked back at her from a corona of flame.
“Aww, shit-it’s Hot Stuff, Re
“Yep.” Jesus, wasn’t there anyone whose life hadn’t been touched by Harvey Comics?
Victor Jacks had gotten his ink at a Sunset Boulevard parlor called Skin Illos, at the behest of Nikki, who had been his girlfriend of record prior to Barb. Barb had heard you could bleach tattoos by using a laser. She hadn’t been able to work up the spit to suggest this to Victor prior to his very timely demise.
“Re
“But?”
“What if Victor…you know, keeps coming back every time we, you and I…you know.”
“Victor ain’t coming back again.”
“What’re we go
“What I wanted to do originally. Dump him in the sewer. What’s left of him. Let the rats chow down.”
“Guess we’re go
Barb grimaced at the sliced-and-diced assemblage of tissue on the floor. It relaxed and settled, shifting softly. Re
“But first, babe-hand me that meat cleaver.”
The manhole cover weighed ninety-five pounds, give or take. Re
Hacking Victor into itty-bitty bite-sized morsels had given Re
Sucker just wouldn’t give it up. Re
And if Vic-baby somehow managed to make a third curtain call, why, that’d be the tits, too. Because Re
Like what he might do if Barb lost her marbles and started that gawdawful shrieking again…
Nahh. Just a vagrant thought. No problem, there.
Re
You don’t pull back your hand in time, you lose. And it wasn’t his fingers that Re
Just now, in fact, he was up for another bout. His body urged him to hurry home to her. She would be fresh out of her bath, tasty and scented, and Re
“Do you hear something? A noise, or-”
“Oh for Christ sake, Barb!”
“I’m serious. Stop it.”
Feeling like a wiener, Re
“I don’t hear anything, babe, except maybe your own paranoia bounc-ing back at us from the walls.” Fed up, he grabbed his smokes off the nightstand. Pretty glib, he thought, for a guy who was strangling on a rope of living dead ligaments about an hour ago.
“I thought I heard the seat fall down in the bathroom.”
“My fault. I left it up.” When Re
Even to someone already dead.
Re
“I admit I left the seat up, babe. Your house, your rules. But that fuzzy cover on the tank makes it fall down again, and-”
“Shh!”
He smoked in silence, having scored his point. Barb took the ciga-rette from between his lips, stole two quick puffs, and replaced it as though afraid of being caught tampering with the evidence at a murder scene.
Re
“Barb, there’s water all over the bathroom floor. I think maybe your pipes are backing up. Roots, maybe.”
“Oh, no! Is it all-you know, messy?”
“Just water. Like a big splash, all over.”
“Re
That brought him back quick enough. What a man.
As he skidded in barefoot, he caught Barb shrinking and pointing. Something had just moved near the juncture of wall and ceiling above her cosmetic table. Re
“What the hell is it?” said Re
“You ever see a white rat with no hair, with eyes that big? Jeeezus, Re
Re
She stopped him, open palm to naked chest. “No you won’t, either, Re
When Barb let loose with stuff like that it stopped Re
She watched his cigarette glow near the bathroom door. “You just stay right there and hit the overhead lights when I tell you, okay?”
“Yes’m.”
“Go!”
The hundred-watter Barb kept in the ceiling fixture blinded them. The thing on the wall recoiled and dropped behind the mirror. Re