Colten entered the bar well after midnight. He walked through the stuffy air to the back corner and sat down in an empty booth. He was sure that the dimly lit tavern would conceal his loathing. But he wasn’t looking for a hiding place. He was out hunting, and this was the third venue of the night.
The waitress came over and asked if he wanted a drink.
“Draft.”
He didn’t plan on drinking it, but he knew that he couldn’t sit empty-handed and go unnoticed. He wasn’t sure how many more places he had to hit before he found what he was looking for. He had to keep his wits about him, and so when the waitress returned, he gave her a ten spot and called it good. He also had to be ready to move. Colten grabbed the beer and put it to his mouth, letting just a little quench his thirst, filtering a sip between his teeth.
He was off the Vegas strip. Away from the high-priced tourist spots but in a good locale. The frequenters of these places were either drunk locals or out-of-towners low on cash but still relishing the easy release that came from alcohol. His first two stops were a complete bust.
The first bar had been empty for well over a half hour. He felt uneasy. Exposed. He moved on before he was forced to make conversation with the bartender, who spent breaks between wiping the counter by watching the baseball game on TV.
The second pub had been occupied by a couple trying their best to crawl into each other’s skin, and a small office party. The couple would not do tonight. He wasn’t interested in twisting in a romantic vibe to his bloodlust. Tonight, he had a specific goal in mind. Bringing down to earth something big.
Now at a third bar, in the dark, moving the glass slowly in circles on the table, Colten thought about the day. He had planned to finish the girl off tonight. It would have been slow and calculated. He had waited almost a full week, relishing in the thought and planning every small detail. He had slowly worked her down to the bare, raw emotion. She would scream—of course she would—but she would scream for some pointed purpose, some focused stimuli, some single beam of pure channeled hope. He had learned when the kill came too quickly, a person’s mind would scatter in ramblings, cursing, spitting. Messy.
Prepping her had channeled her suffering. At that moment when her last breath leaked out of her nostrils, he would know the one thing that kept her hope alive. She would scream it out. She would beg for it to help her, and be crushed when the full realization that that one hope would not save her. He would feed on the power then, the power of breaking the one thing that someone held dear. It was a better fix than the beer before him. It was better than anything.
But now she was gone before he’d had the chance to bathe in her misery.
Twenty minutes passed and Colten was about to move on when he saw him. The one who fit the night’s order. The living corpse was sitting on the opposite side of the room, at the far end of the bar. Tucked in the shadows and blended with the wall sat a middle-aged bald man in a black T-shirt. He was big, several inches taller than Colten and at least 100 pounds heavier. The man’s thick biceps flexed as he brought his cocktail to his lips and set the glass back on the table, the ice inside making an empty clink. There was a small, aged, unfinished tattoo peeking out from below the sleeve, an indication that the man wanted to be thought of as tough at one time, but had not wanted to return to the pain of the needle.
Colten didn’t need a Rosetta stone to decipher his character. The shirt was too pressed and clean for him to be a real biker, and the redness of his skin confirmed that he was not used to the sun. No, this was some guy acting tough. Some guy playing the tough guy role. He could tell by the higher end liquor he had ordered to fill his glass. Yup, Colten thought, he would do just fine. It was not just sheer bulk that Colten had a desire to tear down tonight—no, he wanted to rip ego straight from the bone.
The man got up from the bar and paid his tab, then turned and walked out the door. Colten walked behind him and watched as the man jumped on a black VMAX and fired it up. Colten quickened his pace and got to his truck as the man shot westward toward the highway. It didn’t take long for Colten to catch up and trail behind the unwitting soul.
They drove briskly out from Vegas north up the interstate until the darkness overcame the distant haze of the marquis lights behind them. Colten’s face would glow as he lit the lighter and fired up another cigarette, his eyes on the single taillight of the motorcycle ahead of him. On the radio, the steady thumping of metal coiled his anxiousness around his spine. This was proving to be an adequate substitute.
For now.
The cat and mouse were the only two beings moving on earth at that moment, as if all other cars had vanished and they took center stage. All other souls asleep or watching in quiet, morbid fascination. The only lights on the road were the motorcycle ahead, the black pickup, and the occasional splash of a tossed-out cigarette butt. The motorcycle turned off the highway onto a county road before the lights of the air base lightened the night sky, and Colten moved in for the kill.
Accelerating to close the distance, he was on the bike before the rider knew what was coming. With a quick turn of the wheel he swerved into the rider and sent the bike skidding across the pavement, the rider eating stone and rock as he bounced down the shoulder. The man tumbled, his body becoming more lax with each punch of the pavement until he came to rest next to the hulk of metal that was his ride.
The red brake lights of the pickup truck illuminated the darkness, accentuated by the reverse lights as Colten backed up to the fallen rider. He put it in park, got out, and walked up to the man, who lay moaning on the road. Squatting down, he pulled the wallet out of the man’s back pocket and looked through the contents, pulling out the driver’s license.
“David Wilcox. Nice to meet you, Dave. Nice night, huh?”
The man lay on his back, trying to control the pain that was shooting through his body. He looked up at Colten.
“Says here you’re from Minnesota. Long way from home, ain’t you?”
“P . . . p . . . please—” the man was gasping—“call a . . . an am . . . bul—”
“Naw, ain’t no need for that. Don’t worry, it’ll be over soon enough.”
Colten walked over to his truck and reached into the bed. He pulled out two large chains and fixed them to his hitch. Then he strung one back and hooked it to the handlebars of the motorcycle. Taking the end of the other chain, he bent down and tied it around the waist of the fallen man.
“W . . . what are you . . . no please . . . not like this.”
“Why not . . . got to be some way, don’t it?”
Colten got into the truck amidst the screams of the man lying on the ground. He put it in drive and turned off the road into the desert. He felt a slight jerk as the slack from the chains abated and he slowly eased his tow off the road. Once on rock, he looked back through the rearview and saw the man wrestling with the chain. Funny thing, thought Colten. The man knew what was coming, knew there was no way out of his fix, and yet still fought to prevent it. Colten didn’t see the use but waited to gun the engine for a few seconds. An animal toying with its food.
Suddenly consumed by unmitigated rage and fueled by the pounding rhythm of the truck’s soundtrack, Colten hit the gas and went plowing through the desert. The sound of scraping metal and flesh, screams of agony, and sparks of rock followed him as he drove on.
Faster and faster, swerving now and then to let the tow swing in arcs, rooster-tailing stone, spark, and blood behind him. He was crazed, like a heroin addict struggling to tie the tourniquet with shaky hands. He drove, dodging boulders and looking back as they reached up to punch both man and machine. After several minutes, he drove up to a dry creek bed. Colten hit the brakes and stepped out of the truck. He walked back to check on his quarry.
The machine was wrecked. The handle bars bent from the force of the dragging and the once-shining machine now triturated scrap. Small pieces of metal glinted in the dark, stretching behind them out of view. Colten reached down and unhooked the chain. He gathered it up and threw it into the back of the truck.
He walked around to the passenger door, opened it, and pulled a pair of gloves out of the console. He also grabbed a half-filled water bottle, shut the door, and walked back to the man. Or what was left of him.
There on the ground, unidentifiable to anyone who may have known him, lay Dave Wilcox of Minnesota. His limbs broken, contorted beyond repair. His clothes ripped and torn, pieces of fabric woven into the open wounds of his body. With slow, intermittent pushes, the man’s rib cage would rise, forcing yet another breath into his pulverized body.
Colten squatted next to him and looked at the man’s face. With all the energy he could muster, Dave Wilcox of Minnesota tried to speak, but only blood streaked down his torn cheek.
“Shhh . . . no use talkin’. Just let me enjoy this for a bit,” Colten said as he took a swig of water.
“W . . . wh . . . why . . .”
“Ain’t no use askin’ why. It’s done. Nothing you can do about it now.”
The man looked up at the clear sky above him. Cloudless. Black. The streak of an airplane’s exhaust high in the sky etched into his cornea as his rib cage fell and he died. Colten took another mouthful of water and spit it into the dead man’s face.
He got up and removed the chain from the body, wrapped it up, and put it back in the truck. He got in the cab, turned down the radio, and slowly drove back to the county road.
It wasn’t the grand night he had planned, the release he had hoped for since finding the girl at the diner, but it would have to do.
Only until he found her.