KILLER BE KILLED
Compendium 2020 – Story 16
By
Andrew Hawnt
Jess
knew he was getting closer. The forest was his turf, and she knew
that he would soon be too close to avoid. She had to act. He'd been
given the nickname Mr Happy due to the smiles he hacked into the
faces of his victims, but she knew he was really Obadiah Jones,
disgraced military man, psychopath, killer of three of her friends
and over a dozen other people.
Jess
was determined she wouldn't be next.
“Come
on, you sick bastard,” she screamed at the silence as she turned to
look back the way she had come. “I'm right here, what are you
waiting for? Get out here in front of me you frigging coward!”
Keep
your bearings, Jess, she told herself. The path is right
there, between those trees, past the stump and between those dead
trunks. Don't lose the tree that looks like a claw and the stumps
that look like sleeping lions. Those are your way out.
The
night was mercifully clear and quiet. Perfect for catching a killer.
Jess
shoved her dark hair way from her face and pulled it into a ponytail
with a hairband from her jacket pocket. From the other pocket she
pulled her work gloves and quickly pulled them on. She listened. No
footsteps yet, so she had a few seconds. She looked down, found the
rock shaped like a shoe, then counted five paces to her right, which
brought her to a tree with low hanging branches. She reached up and
pulled the rucksack from its hiding place, quickly checking its
contents as she did so. Present and correct.
“Here,
kitty kitty,” came the croak of a voice she'd prayed never to hear
again. “Mr Happy gonna wear your skin by morning.”
“Come
and get it, Obadiah,” Jess snarled. She grabbed three things from
the rucksack, then strapped it onto her shoulders. She pulled the
night vision goggles over her head and switched them on. The taser
felt good in her right hand. She fired it up. In her left was a claw
hammer. She would shock him with the taser and then break every joint
in his body. He wouldn't be able to run away again if his knees,
ankles and elbows were pulped. He wouldn't be able to kill a prison
guard and escape into the wilderness this time.
The
darkness became a world of murky green through the goggles, but they
allowed Jess to see exactly what was going on in the dark between
those trees. Obadiah hurried towards her purposefully, a crowbar in
his fist.
“I
see you, Jess,” he snarled. “I see what you're packin', too. You
planning to do a number on me? I'm impressed.”
“You
can't scare me, Obadiah. You took my feelings away when you killed my
friends. You're not going to do that to anyone else. It ends here.”
“That's
a nice taser,” he grinned at Jess as he got so close to her she
could see the strange night-vision black of his eyes. “Go on, use
it on me. Make me feel wanted.”
She
hesitated, her finger trembling against the device. That cost her
dearly. Jones smacked the taser away and it clattered out of reach.
Jones swung the crowbar, hooking the claw hammer and dragging it out
of her hand. It hit the ground a few feet away. Close, but not close
enough. Bringing the crowbar back round, Jones smashed the goggles,
cracking her nose as he did so. The ruined goggles fell to the
ground, and Jess went to her knees, staring at the gush of blood from
her nose as it turned the dry grass red beneath her.
He
brought the crowbar around again, aiming for her skull, but Jess was
quick this time. She rummaged at the side of her boot and pulled the
army knife she'd stashed there, ramming it into Obadiah's thigh and
pushing until the guard met the dirty denim of his jeans. He screamed
and staggered off-balance, his swing going wide. Jess swiped at him
with the knife, but he was too far away.
Unfortunately, she was still in range of the crowbar. Jones swung it wildly, and
while he missed her face he managed to strike her left shoulder. Jess
yelled in pain, backing up, the knife held out in front of her,
stained with his grimy blood.
“I
know your secret,” she spat through the mess of blood over her top
lip. “I know you haven't been working alone. Well guess what,
you're one on one right now and this is between me and you. Like it
always would be.”
“Me
and you?” Jones laughed and spat phlegm at the ground, “what
makes you think I know you or care? I'm here for my kicks, Jess. I'm
here to fuck you up and skin you. Might leave you alive while I do.
Imagine seeing yourself with no skin. Imagine me peeling you like a
fucking orange. I'll make you beg for your next breath while you've
got no skin. I might put your face on and let you beg to your own
face. That's what you've got coming. You made me bleed. Let me show
you how good I can do it to you.”
Jess
focused on her rage rather than the ache in her shoulder or the
raging pain of her nose.
“Julie.
Angela. Gemma. Those were my friends. All those others. All women.
Why?”
Jones
toyed with the crowbar. “What do you want me to say? Are you
expecting an in-depth examination of extreme psychosexual behaviours
in serial killers, sponsored by Jim's Carpets, special episode at
eleven? You won't get it from me. I'm simple. I'm easy. My
motivations are what they are. It gets me off. No troubled childhood.
No psychotic episodes or drug use or whatever. I just enjoy it.
That's why they struggled so much to pin down a motive. There ain't
one. Same for my friends who help me. The ones that are around us
right now.”
Jess
caught her breath as noises from the dark all around her signalled
the arrival of four other men. Each wore the same filthy jeans and
denim jacket. Each wore the same red and green lumberjack shirt. Each
was of a similar build and age.
They
all carried crowbars.
“Say
hello to the Joneses,” said Obadiah with a broken laugh. The look
of horror on Jess's face was delicious. “I like to think of them as
my alibis.”
Jess's
heart raged inside her, but still, she felt like her blood had frozen.
All of those people dead, all of those investigations that had
coloured her life with darkness for as long as she would live, all of
them had missed this. Jones had never worked alone.
“I
was right. All through this, I was right. They... look like you.”
“Quintuplets,”
Jones laughed. “We're living Rocking Horse shit. There's five of
us, we share one name and one life. Never gonna deviate from it. Why
be anyone else when you can be Obadiah Jones?You're going to die the
only person who has ever known the truth.”
Jess
gritted her teeth. “No, I won't.”
As
the five Joneses lurched towards her, Jess slid off the backpack and
grabbed what she'd been desperate to use. A road flare. She yanked
the cap off, ready to ignite it.
“You
know what you forget about? What you never think about?”
The
Joneses raised their crowbars for the kill.
Jess
struck the flare and it blossomed into blazing red light, spilling
sparks and smoke all around as it lit the surrounding area.
“Those
left behind.”
The
Joneses saw them then. Surrounding them between trees, crouching by
trunks and even perched on thick branches. Men and women in their
forties and fifties. Men and women whose lives had been tainted by a
gang of brothers. Men and women with guns in one hand and photographs
in the other, each showing the smiling face of someone Obadiah and
his boys had killed. The brothers span to face the newcomers,
screaming at them and swinging their crowbars as a deterrent.
Jess
staggered through the ring of psychopaths, leaving the flare between
them. It cast shadows away from them as its burning red core sparked.
More
light illuminated the forest as wave upon wave of bullets were
discharged into the five men. Their faces exploded in chunks of
burning meat as heavy rounds found their mark. Bones and throats and
organs were devastated. Crowbars thick with the dry blood of their
prey fell to the ground along with their ruined bodies.
Obadiah
Jones was the last to die, and he managed to hold Jess's gaze as she
emptied the other contents of her rucksack close to him. Petrol.
Rags. Firelighters. Two bottles. He held her gaze as she ushered the
parents away. He held her gaze as she fashioned the Molotov
cocktails, and he held it as she turned his surroundings into an
inferno. As his eyes burned away, he drank in the stench of his own
cooking meat and that of his brothers. The cleansing flames brought
silence as his nerve endings were destroyed and his brain cooked in
his skull.
Jess
didn't look back.
Nobody did.
©
Andrew Hawnt 2020
About
Compendium 2020:
Compendium
2020 is a project from author Andrew Hawnt that consists of 52 weekly
stories encompassing science fiction, fantasy and horror. They are a
mix of short stories and flash fiction, 100% original and written
throughout 2020. Why is he doing this? To keep the words flowing. To
keep the ideas coming. To dance in worlds that are his and his alone.
To prove that he can.
About
Andrew Hawnt:
You
can find Andrew on Facebook at facebook.com/andrewhawntauthor and on
Twitter and Instagram as @andrewhawnt. Formerly a musician and DJ,
Andrew is known for his books, comic book writing, music journalism
and more, including fiction in Doctor Who Adventures, the Judge Dredd
Megazine and others. Look out for his film work soon.
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