The Count of Carolina, page 21
part #2 of A Clean Up Crew Series
“Not witches, moron. You said ‘where we’re going,’ and I asked ‘Which. Is?’” he said, enunciating each word separately.
“Whatever. Just ‘cause I don’t use all that fancy language don’t make me stupid.”
“Well, it don’t make you smart either,” Lewis mocked.
What neither of them realized during their infantile bickering session, and what Lewis should have remembered would happen, was that the ether had worn off sufficiently that J.J. had regained consciousness. She instinctively knew that pretending she was still under its influence was a good idea, so she continued to play dead. Lewis had taken his arm from her shoulder when Clyde had hit a pothole so deep while travelling to fast that he’d been bounced upwards, causing his head to hit the top of the cab, which in the passenger’s area had been badly torn, so that there was no padding remaining. So now she pendulumed back and forth between them again.
Opening her eyes the absolute minimum required in order to see, she used a couple of quick turns by Clyde to examine her situation. At first, she didn’t see anything that she could use to her advantage, but a second pothole sent him skyward, and her head was fortuitously aimed in that direction, allowing her to see a revolver sitting on the seat between them. The next turn that flopped her towards Clyde gave her the opportunity to grab it without notice.
“Which. Is,” Clyde began, sending a little mockery the pompous doctor’s direction, “…my cabin. Conrad’s old burnt out shack ain’t the only of its kind in Greenville Country!”
“Yes, I would imagine they’re as ubiquitous as the crabs in your pubic hair. Can you give me some idea of how much further it is? Because if it’s too much longer, I’m not sure I’m going to survive the ride the way you’re driving. There’s been no sight of any other cars for like twenty minutes. Why are you still going so damn fast?”
Clyde smiled a dirty, mostly toothless and totally evil grin. He said, “Cause I don’t want to wait to start having fun!”
J.J. felt the gun under her left leg, where a few more life-threatening turns had allowed her to move it. Oh, we’ll have fun, Uncle Clyde! she thought.
Conrad was seated in the second seat of the Rogue, with his pistol still aimed at Nicole and Dan as the latter followed his instructions on where to drive. They were already out of the city and had left paved roads behind as they headed toward Lake Hartwell. Nicole, whose hands were tied, recognized the route they were taking, and her stomach tightened. She said nothing, however, and presently, Conrad told Dan to take a left where they’d always taken a right, and she realized that they were headed for the shore of Lake Hartwell opposite the scene of her years of torture, and she forced her body to cease the age-old reaction to approaching the old cabin.
“You know, June-Bug. It’s a real shame things had to go this way. I should already start mourning, knowing I’m going to lose my daughter and my granddaughter today.”
He’d been letting the thinly-veiled death threats pepper his conversation since they left the office building, and though Dan knew there was a gun barrel pointed at the back of his head, he was still getting pretty bored with them.
Conrad went on. “If you’d just been a good girl, kept your mouth shut and your legs in the air, none of this would be happening now.” Dan let out a little snort, and Conrad rewarded him with a hard poke in the back of the head. “And I wouldn’t have a pussy for a son-in-law.”
Dan’s eyes narrowed slightly. Yet another repetition of the “pussy” label would have rolled right off. Fuck him. But the addition of the “legs in the air” statement triggered something in him that he’d only felt once before, and that was when he thought Ileana Gabor had killed his wife. It was the unlocking of the cage in his brain where the wild animal quietly paced, waiting for the latch to be pulled back.
He looked ahead. The dirt road they were on was winding through the trees, but up ahead, he saw that it forked. Conrad, while still rambling on about how much better it would have been if Nicole had just continued to allow the torture to go on, told Dan to bear left. But Dan noticed that at the point of the fork in the road was a large, sturdy, and quite lovely-looking flowering dogwood. The tree, in Dan’s mind, instantly became a weapon. After a quick glance to make sure Nicole’s seat belt was fastened, he pushed the accelerator pedal to the floor and made no attempt to veer toward either of the two road options.
The sudden lurch caused Conrad to be thrown backwards with a curse, but he recovered and was just about to shoot Dan in the back of the head when the SUV impacted the tree. Dan’s face was assailed by the steering wheel air bag, and Nicole was protected roughly by the one that ejected from the dash in front of her.
Conrad, however, was positioned at a central point between them, and in order to be able to lean forward and remind them that he had a gun, he hadn’t buckled up. His flight between the two of them and subsequent destruction of the windshield as he passed through it like it was water was something to behold.
It took Nicole and Dan a second to recover, realize they were, apart from some rugburn-like spots on their faces from the airbags and some sore ribs from the seat restraint, well enough to walk away from the totaled rental.
As they got out, Dan quickly untied Nicole’s wrists as they went to look for Conrad.
They found him about thirty feet from the vehicle. He’d ricocheted off the left side of the tree and was lying in a broken-looking heap in some tall grass. Dan walked over and gave him as hard a kick in the mouth as the world had ever seen, barring perhaps the vaunted roundhouse of Chuck Norris, said to be able to change the orbits of the planets. Conrad’s head moved, but he showed no signs of life. As he looked down, Dan felt that the death was rather anticlimactic, and was sure Nicole would be feeling the same way. After every abominable thing her father had done to her, he expected she would have liked to be a lot more involved in his ending.
But as she looked at the ball of shit that was Conrad Barker, she said nothing. After a moment, she simply spit on the inert body and walked away, saying, “Come on. It’s time to bring out the rocket launcher.”
They walked together to the rear of the Rogue, and Dan was pleased to see the electronics of the vehicle had survived intact, as the key fob instantly opened the hatch. She grabbed the GROM, and handed Dan the LAW 80. She showed Dan how to load in a rocket, and they both did so. The tubes were long and not easy to carry, but each had a canvas strap that allowed the user move with their hands-free. Dan saw Cole sling hers over a shoulder and did the same. They then grabbed the two remaining missiles each.
“Well, this is great. We’re armed to the teeth but with no idea where we’re going.”
“Oh, I know exactly where we’re going. And we’re almost there.”
“Really. Do tell.”
“About a mile down this way,” she said, pointing in the direction Conrad had instructed Dan to go, “is dear old Uncle Clyde’s own fishing hut. Before my mama died, we went there a few times for a picnic. Conrad would drink and fish. Clyde did that too but made sure to look at me with his beady ferret eyes plenty of times while he was doing it. That’s where they’ll be. That’s where J.J. is.”
“Then we need to get there fast,” Dan said.
“Yes, we do.”
They started toward the left road when Dan looked again to where Conrad was lying.
Or rather where he’d been lying. To their mutual shock, he was gone. Either he’d regained consciousness and crawled off, or he’d been awake the whole time and had taken the boot to the mouth like a champion. Either way, he was departed now. Dan looked at the spot where his landing had flattened the tall grass, and saw that in his haste to get away, he’d left the gun, and he retrieved it.
Thinking this was a disastrous turn of events, he was surprised to see Nicole smiling.
“Good. Now I can still murder him,” she said. Dan was a little taken aback by her not using the word “clean,” but realized that when it came to her father, Nicole didn’t feel the need to veil her language. “Let’s get out daughter back. Again.”
Before they moved on, Dan looked at the demolished Rogue. “Darlene got the supplemental insurance, right?”
“Really? Really, Dan?”
“Yeah, you’re right. Fuck that. Let’s find J.J.”
20
The Bonfire of the Manatees
They ran as fast as they could with the rocket launchers strapped on, and soon Nicole held up a hand to stop. “It’s right around this bend,” she whispered. But as she began to ready her weapon, she sniffed the air. The way ahead smelled hauntingly familiar. She waited a moment, but as she saw smoke rising above the trees ahead, she was sure of what she was smelling. It was burning wood and kerosene. On a hunch, she strapped the launcher back over her shoulder. Smiling again, she looked at Dan and said simply, “Come on.”
Dan was confused but eager to move forward. He was surprised to see that Nicole neither appeared on guard for dangers nor was she moving any faster than she would were she taking a normal, casual walk through the woods.
They came around the bend and were met by the sight of an old cabin, flames just now starting to reach through the windows and lick the roof shingles. On the front porch, through the smoke, Nicole could make out the form of Dr. Nathan Lewis, propped up in a chair, naked, with three neat bullet holes in the center of his chest. Next to him, she was surprised to also see the body of J.J.’s kidnapper, although it took Nicole a moment to recognize him, as his face was badly damaged by what must have been caused by a bullet fired at point-blank range. They looked like two beached sea creatures, about to be roasted.
Standing about twenty feet from the front of the burning cabin was J.J. Her left hand was on her hip, which was tilted in a way that women seemed particularly good at doing, especially after accomplishing something great. In her right hand, pointed toward the ground, was Clyde’s revolver. She was wearing Lewis’s lab coat.
“J.J.!” Dan called to her.
As she turned, he had to catch his breath, as his daughter’s face was molded into the exact same expression he’d seen on his wife when she’d shot Bogdan Grigorescu. It was the face of an assassin.
“Hi, Dad. Hi, Mom,” she said, as if there were no burning building, no dead pedophile or abductor. “Mom, I have a present for you.”
“What are you talking about?” Dan asked. But Nicole was not confused. She knew what her daughter was about to offer her. She smiled at J.J. as the young woman led her to a wide-trunked laurel oak. There, tied securely and with Lewis’s ether rag shoved into his mouth, was Clyde Davis. Aside from a nasty bruise on the forehead, clearly more of J.J.’s handiwork, he was satisfyingly intact.
“Why, Uncle Clyde,” Nicole said, now wearing the killer mask herself. “What a wonderful surprise.” She held her hand out, and J.J., without asking a single question, passed her the revolver. She moved closer to Clyde and bent forward. She could see the pure animal fear in his eyes. “Guess what I’m going to do now. I’m going to teach you everything you need to know to do your next job. Do you know what your next job is, Uncle Clyde?”
The man, his eyes now opened even wider, frantically shook his head.
“No? Okay. I’ll tell you. Your next job is being dead.” She smiled broadly at his horrified response.
“Now I have a question for you,” she stated. “Do you like things when they’re rough and painful or when they’re nice? Nice and gentle?”
Clyde began moving his head, the only part that wasn’t bound to the tree, in a frantic, random spasmodic manner, and was desperately trying to speak, though the rag prevented him from doing so. Nicole reached over and slapped his face, which had the combined effect of stopping the foolish movements and causing him to open his mouth in shock. When he did, she deftly pulled the rag from his mouth. She could still smell the ether as she tossed it aside, knowing at once the purpose for which it had been used originally, before J.J. repurposed it to close off the only part on Clyde Davis that was large. With a grimace, she corrected herself. One of two parts.
Uncle Clyde drew in a ragged gasp, then screamed, “GENTLE!!”
Dan was standing well off to the side, but he could still see Nicole’s face, and what he saw now frightened him. But, he supposed, when someone finally gets to speak words they’ve been waiting over twenty years to say to someone as vile as Clyde Davis, when you’re basically a stone-cold killing machine, that’s the only face one could expect. Still, it dripped with an evil that, even knowing those things to be true, chilled him to his core. As he continued to watch the scene unfold, he let the rocket launcher slide off his shoulder. It fell to the ground.
“I thought you probably did. Well, here’s the thing about Little Junie…” she said as she tossed the revolver aside and started to step backwards to a safer distance and remove the weapon strapped to her. “…Little Junie likes it when things are a little rough and a little painful.”
Dan barely had time to dive to safety before the rocket travelled the distance from the launcher to the tree. The projectile covered that footage in the blink of an eye, burrowing into Uncle Clyde’s scrawny frame before exploding inside his body. The blast was horribly loud, and it left a cloud where the superheated expanding gas of the detonated missile burned. But even before the smoke could clear, the huge tree began to list sickly to the right, and with sounds nearly as loud as the explosion, it cracked and screamed as it fell, landing on the burning cabin with a deafening crash.
Where Clyde Davis had been a moment before, there was now a ragged, smoking stump. Dan couldn’t even see any blood. Then he noticed a leg, having no business lying by itself without a body for it to hold up, about ten feet from the tree. It too was smoking.
He looked at the two women in his life. It was like looking at the same portrait in two different gilt frames. In this place and for this moment, they had become one beast of vengeance in a pair of bodies.
A shower of sparks had risen like fulminated fireworks into the sky. Nicole shook herself from her reverie. She turned to J.J.
“Burning the cabin was a nice touch.”
“I considered it an homage.”
“I’m honored. But it was the fire that led to the discovery of my leftovers back in the day. And the cabin belonging to the pink mist formerly known as Uncle Clyde was bigger than the one I torched, meaning the fire will be even easier for a bothersome passerby to spot. So as much as I would love to stay and see this through till the embers die down, we need to vanish.”
J.J. tossed her a set of GM keys. “Clyde’s pickup seems like the quickest exit. Unless you parked the rental nearby.”
Nicole grabbed the keys and moved toward the truck. “The rental is ferrying this bunch to hell as we speak. It is just as dead as they are.”
“Uh oh,” J.J. said. “I hope Darlene got the supplemental coverage.”
As she moved into the driver’s seat, Nicole made a face. “Seriously? You and your father are hysterical. Do you think at this point in my life I fucking care about the rental? If they ever find it, they can charge it to the Walkers.”
J.J. scooted to the middle of the bench seat. “Oh, yeah. The Walkers. They probably are going to have a hard time collecting from a non-existent renter.”
“Precisely.”
Dan, still wiggling his index finger in his ear to attempt to quell the ringing from the exploding projectile, was the last to get into the truck. “Let’s ride,” he said, more loudly than intended thanks to his compromised hearing. The women laughed.
“Okay!” Nicole shouted back.
They pulled out of the clearing. When she came to the ruined SUV, she slammed on the brakes and jumped out. She ran to the open rear end and threw the remaining guns and ammo into the bed of the pickup, then, after a quick scan to see if Conrad was lurking (he wasn’t), she resumed their escape.
Before long, they were back on paved roads, headed to the Motel Z. While Dan and J.J. got their things together and thrown over the scattered armory already in the back of the truck (which they now parked boldly in front of their room, unconcerned, at least for a little while, about being spotted), Nicole walked to the office.
When she entered, Cleea was again seated behind the desk with her back to the door, but this time, she was awake and watching Judge Judy. She turned when she heard the door.
“Well as I live and breathe. If it isn’t little Junie, coming to say goodbye.”
“How could you tell?” Nicole asked with a smile.
“You got that ‘goodbye’ look in your pretty eyes, girl.”
“Well, you’re right. I’m leaving. I thought I’d be a proper Southern girl, mind my manners, and say it to you with my words as well.”
“You don’t even know…” Cleea began, but then had to quickly bring a tissue to her eyes as the tears began.
“I don’t know what?” Nicole asked, walking around the desk and wrapping her arms around the sobbing woman.
“How much I love you. Ain’t no good reason. Knew you for a month or so, thirty-some years ago. But, June, I ain’t never passed a day without thinking about you at least once. Something ‘bout you, girl.”
Cole squeezed her a little harder, then let go. “‘Bout you too, I reckon,” she said, slipping into full drawl for the first time since the teenage Nicole had painfully discarded the accent under Darlene’s tutelage.
Cleea finished wiping her eyes. She looked up at her lone motel guest and said, “Well, Mrs. Nicole Porter, I wish you years of happiness. Whatever you done back then, and whatever you done now… that’s all behind. You don’t look back.”
Nicole nodded, then sans-drawl again, said, “There’s one last thing I have to look back to find, but not today, and probably not here in Greenville.” A quick look of concern crossed Cleea’s face. All-Southern once more, Nicole put a hand on her old friend’s cheek and said, “But listen, you don’t worry yourself one bit about that. That’ll take care of itself, by-n-by.”
