ACT ONE: EARLY TO FALL

CHAPTER FIVE: A SONG FOR THE REAPER

9:02 PM...

On the other side of town, Vincent wasn't paying as much attention to his surroundings as he should have been. Instead, he felt it was necessary to take in as much of Miss Renau's figure as possible. She was an exceedingly attractive woman. Cool, calm, smart, and sexy. Too bad she was a damn cop. Of course, no one's perfect. That really put things in perspective. A cop dating a con? It wouldn't last a week.

But, she was beautiful. She was fairly tall for a woman and seemed to be in good shape. She had dirty blonde hair which was down to her shoulders. Very wavy. She also had green eyes, which he was very fond of. Jesus, what a woman...

She's a cop! Stop thinking with your dick.

"Stop looking at my ass." Said Gab.

Vincent smirked.

"Sorry."

They reached a fork... It seemed they could go either left, or right... Either way could lead to certain doom.

"So...Which one?"

"...I have a bad feeling about both of them... I haven't heard jack shit from Starkweather for awhile... What the hell is wrong with people today? It seemed just about every person was the product of a corrupt society..."

"And you're any better?"

"Course I am. Listen, lady. I may be a con, but I'm no murderer... The first person I've ever killed was tonight, and it was to survive... I hate this... I just want this night to end."

"Well, don't worry... I'm sure we'll make it through this... Someone's bound to come looking for us..."

"I'm not so sure about that."

"What do you mean?"

"Well... When I was talking to Starkweather earlier, he mentioned that when he 'acquired' me, he made sure it appeared that I was dead to the rest of the world. Less questions."

"So?"

"So, that means he probably did the same for you, sweetheart... Hate to break it to you, but we're both up shit creek without a paddle."

"Fuck..."

"And to make matters worse, we're armed with a bat and a goddamned black jack..."

"And yet," Starkweather muttered, "I have yet to see some fantastic kills."

"Starkweather, you bastard!" Screamed Gab.

"Ah, Miss Renau... I do hope you can forgive me for putting you in this predicament... But I had to have at least one other woman... I mean, some one might begin to think I have a thing for men if I didn't throw you in the picture."

"Fuck off, you slimy prick!" Vincent snapped

"Temper, temper... Get to the killing, or I'll tell the Hoods where you two are. You wouldn't want that, would you?"

He chuckled evilly, and then there was silence.

As Starkweather watched them on the monitor, began to rub his crotch area.

This is brilliant... That fiasco with Miss Douglass really got me hot... I guess I might have to let the python out early... I do hope something doesn't happen while I'm re-watching the foo-

Wait... As brilliant as this whole team work aspect is... Yes... That's perfect... What if I take Vincent out of his element... Take him away from the eyes of Miss Renau... Toss him two other people, and give Renau to... Hmm... Well... We can decide that when the time comes... I'll save the python for later.

Flipping a switch, the monitor changed and he noticed that the good ol' boys, Frank and Felix, jump a member of the Innocentz. Frank continued to beat the man up while Felix looked around for something.

Oh, this should be fun to watch... I paid quite a bit of money to get these two out of prison... And so far, they've been worth double that... This will be something...

While Frank proceeded to pummel the poor chap, Felix went about finding a chair, some duct tape, and a gag. When the poor excuse for a man was tied up, they began to look around the store they were in.

The store was similar to K-Mart, and Felix began to look through the CDs. The man tried to speak, but with the gag he couldn't get jack shit out. After some searching, he found the one he wanted.

"My Schutzstaffel Sense has directed me to what we seek." Felix muttered.

"Disclose, disclose!" Frank pounded furiously upon the nearest wall with each syllable.

"A tune of the Christian blood, the blood of Jesus, the blood of dead Jew nailed to a 2x4. White Christmas."

"I can see it speaks our message. Let us serve some work-it stew."

Bolting halfway across the store, Frank briskly returned with an armful of stereo equipment which was promptly set up. The disc was inserted, and lo, music began to play. The duo cracked their knuckles respectively, and advanced towards the hapless victim. Lo and behold, it was a karaoke version of the tune. The gents glanced to each other, shrugged, and decided to improvise. Their ability to convey things such as that with a mere nod somewhat baffled the bound Skull, but he was more concerned about other matters.

"I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, all those spics have got to go..." Frank sang

"Where the Negro-skulls splatter, and you can hear the clatter-"

"And the end of old Jim Crow..."

Frank snapped a CD case within his hands, and jammed a plastic shard into the man's left eyeball. He gingerly twisted it left and right, as if adjusting a radio knob, in his mind expecting fine wine to pour out at any second. Felix meanwhile, had hooked his grasp about the gagged victim's lower jaw, and simply ripped down as hard as he could. A good amount if flesh, as well as the left half of the skin on the man's lower jaw, came with it. Muffled screams did nothing to put a damper on their moods.

"To hear the Jews in the fire-" continued Felix.

"Or Negroes hanging from a wire-"

Felix: "May your family have the Aryan might..."

"And may all the world be white!"

Rather than applaud their own ad-lib, the two immediately resumed their work. Frank picked up the heavy stereo system and immediately began to bludgeon the Innocentz's groin with it, while Felix dashed off to the food department a short distance away. Frank dropped the stereo, following him, and both returned not seconds later with new things. Felix grasped pure orange juice and a bottle of vinegar, whilst Frank ran his fingertips over the edge of a peeling knife. Looking at each other, both grinned, and burst out into song once more.

"I'm dreaming, of a white Christmas..." They now sang in unison.

Frank began to carve away all skin from the man's face, starting with the eyelids and moving up to forehead, while Felix carelessly washed the affected areas over with searing citrus. The screaming by now had escalated to a level where even with the gag, it was respectably audible.

"All those spics have got to go!"

Frank proceeded to switch the blade for Felix's vinegar, the orange juice having been tossed aside a split second before. Felix casually gouged out the man's right eye, and with a quick motion of the wrist removed it from the socket entirely. It fell onto the victim's lap, the optic nerve never quite breaking. Frank, with a warm smile one gets from a phone company receptionist, poured the powerful-smelling clear liquid into the new hole.

Sadly, by this point, both faced the reality that soon the pain would knock the man out entirely.

"I think we should drown him." Frank muttered.

Felix simply looked puzzled, not at Frank's inquiry, but rather at the eleven-eyed iridescent squid with feathers that he was absolutely positive he saw rooting about the nearby isles. Frank, whirling around to see what was behind him, saw only Satan giving him the thumbs-up of approval. Giving a smile and a 1940's sitcom wink to the Horned One, Frank dashed off to house wares.

Felix occupied the moment or so Frank was gone in by peeling off layer after layer of skin, muscle, and eventually shavings of bone on the hapless Skull's right cheek. He would periodically stab with the paring blade, and curse something about how the glitter berries never came out. They rarely did these days, it seemed.

Amidst all the screaming, Frank returned with a plain white plastic jug, and a funnel. Felix caught on, and ripped the gag off the enemy. The screeching was unbearable. At least, unbearable to most. The duo had heard far more annoying from women. Frank, knowing what he had to do, did not wait a second in jamming the funnel into the screamer's trachea and dumping bleach within. As the gang member's lungs filled with purging cleanser, his last thought was simply that death would come as a pleasant thing.

Frank meanwhile, regained his sense of reality, shooing the Devil away in a puff of flame. Felix did likewise, having hurled the knife with lethal accuracy at the eleventh eye of the rainbow-squid. As the blade plunged into several Christian rock CDs, he knew the beast was defeated.

Frank smiled. "We have given him lungs that are clean, and tobacco-free."

"And to think, those American cocksuckers wanted to abolish smoking."

"Our ideas are bold and new, but they do work. Speaking of which, let's work-it elsewhere."

Felix simply nodded, grabbed his Louisville Slugger, and headed out. Frank took up a lead pipe he had acquired from the rest-room, and followed suit.

Meanwhile, down the street in the mall, Jon was standing in the shadows with his switchblade drawn. He slowly snuck up behind an Innocentz member, quite adept at silence from the sound of it- absolutely none, and got him in a headlock. Left arm darted out, wrapped around the other's throat, and yanked down hardly. The blade was, naturally, forced up against the man's jugular.

"Now, I'ma gonna ask you this just once, frijole: Got any black tar?" Jon asked.

"Yeah man! Is right over their in that bag o' mine! Please, don't kil- urk!"

A sickening splatter gut off his voice, halfway between a scream and a gurgle.

He hated people who begged for their lives almost as much as he hated everyone else. I mean, they should pick up by the general attitude that they're not gonna make it out of the situation alive. He had simply stabbed the man in the jugular, and was soon showered in a spray of crimson. He smiled, and walked slowly towards the bag. He opened it, and sure enough: Enough heroin to last him for the rest of the week. Beautiful. Things were going his way...

Well... Almost his way. If it was up to him, he would have been the one to rape that fine piece of meat... Not those fuckers! They weren't worthy of the breath God graced them with, and that's why he took them out after the rape. Honestly now, people don't have the decency to share anymore. That, and what they were doing was morally wrong- now he himself felt exempt from all this, half-convinced that there was some form of hell, and half- convinced that after death came only eternal void.

During the rape, of course, he enjoyed a good beat-off, whilst he periodically drew the blade up and down his shoulders, switching hands with both tasks to do so. It was truly beautiful, this, this surreal mixture of pleasure and pain. They were meant to be enjoyed together, these two opposite extremes. Let him know he wasn't dead, like the rest of these cockers would be.

He reached into the bag, and drew the needle. Into his pocket went the blade, and out of it came a length of rubber tubing. He smiled some more, and prepared to shoot up.

Back in the junk yard, Jeremy stepped out of the trailer when he heard a soft pounding on its roof. The moment he was outside, droplets of rain pelted him in the face.

"Goddamnit..." he muttered.

A splash came directly from his left as a fat bigot began, for no apparent reason, to play in a small puddle that was forming while ranting about how "niggers are an insult to the bible".

Really, now? Well... Let's see how you like this, asshole.

Slowly, he crept up on the fat man, making sure to make as little noise as possible. The rain came down heavier now, meaning he wouldn't have to be as quiet as before.

Before the fat man could react, Jeremy had the bat wrapped around his neck and proceeded to choke the man. Struggling and grunting but to no avail, the fat man soon began to grow weak, and he dropped to his knees. Jeremy removed the bat and readied himself.

"If a nigger's an insult to the bible, how come one just fucked you up?"

He swung the bat as hard as he could, striking the man in the ear. The bat destroyed just about every aspect of the man's head, sending skull, blood, and brains splattering everywhere.

"Stupid mother fucker."

Jeremy looked up and saw that another was thirty feet away. He didn't even notice that his buddy was dead.

The fates are smiling down upon me... Two bigots for the price of one...

Using the shadows and rain to mask his movement, he closed in on his target, and using all the adrenaline he could muster, Jeremy hit the man in the back of the head with the bat. The man made some squawking noise, and spun around into another bat strike, killing him.

"Fuckin' asshole..."

"THERE! THERE'S THAT FILTHY HALF-BREED!" A voice boomed out.

Fuck! I've been made.

Jeremy turned and ran. It would be suicide to take them all on at once, especially when they might have nail guns. No way he could do it... Only thing to do was to run as fast as he could and hope for the best

"LOOK AT HIM RUN! IT SHOWS HE'S AN INFERIOR RACE!"

"ARYAN SONS! WE HAVE FOUND HIM! HELP YOUR BROTHERS!"

"AS I WALKED THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH!"

Shit!

He ran, darting in and out of the junk lying around. Cars, tires, bottles, trash. Anything and everything. As he rounded a corner, he spotted a crane and ran for it. He dove, sliding across the mud and trash under it, hiding in the shadows. Seconds later, the trio of bigots came running past.

"What the?! Where the fuck did he go?!"

"You can't hide from the wrath of God, demon!"

"You see that?! He's hiding! That's where he came from! Hiding under a fucking rock, and that's where he crawled back to!"

"Yeah! Yellow bastard!"

"Fucking inferior races, man! They always hide from the justice they deserve! White is right!"

They all agreed in unison, and walked off. No moving a muscle, he stayed underneath the crane with his heart beating with such force; it could rip from his chest if it wanted to. After waiting a good ten minutes, he crawled out from under the crane.

Shit... I'll have to be more careful if I want to sur-

Something cold struck him in the back of the skull, sending his face into the mud.

"Got ya you fucking sonovabitch! GUYS! I FOUND HIM!"

There was another blow. And another. Pain swelled forth from every inch of his being. Over and over again they struck him. The man was beating him with a metal baseball bat, similar to the one he used to kill the other two bigots. He felt his bones break and his blood spray. Yelping in pain, he screamed.

"Please! For the love of God," he pleaded, "stop! Have mercy!"

"Niggers don't get no mercy!"

The three men that passed arrived and smiled down upon him. They all began to kick his body.

"Quit your sniveling!"

And then there was no more thought as a cold alloy bat slammed into Jeremy's skull, splattering brain and shards of bone everywhere. His last thought was of his daughter.

They continued beating him for some time, but then stopped when they decided it was enough. By then though, there was no way anyone could identify the body.

"I guess we showed him! Stupid nigg-"

His slur was cut short as a nail hit him between the eyes, killing him instantly. The remaining trio looked where the shot came from and saw a Japanese man running towards them. More nails came forth from the gun, and before they could react, two had died, and one had collapsed in agony.

"Oh God! Fuck! Please... Don't!"

Hiro walked slowly over to the pleading man.

"Did you show compassion to the man you just beat to death?"

The gang member moaned in pain.

"I didn't think so."

Pointing the nail gun to the man's head, he pulled the trigger three times, killing the man instantly.

Near the Darkwoods Sanitarium, Vallen had finished patching up Carlos as he eyed the pistol cautiously.

"So, who are you?" Vallen asked.

I hope this works.

"My name is Hector Rodriguz, and I am in the food service business." said Carlos calmly.

This wasn't to far from the truth. His birth name was indeed Hector Rodriguz, and he had inherited his father's restaurant when he died. However the restaurant didn't fare so well and was not enough to pay the rent, which explained Mr. Garcia's current occupation He kept his original name and restaurant, incase he had to quickly change lives.

"Well Mr. Rodriguz-"

"Please, call me Hector."

"Right...Well, Hector, your damn lucky this guy attacked you when he did. We were across the street and were about to leave when we heard your gunshots. Though you seemed to have been able to take care of him easily, who knows if you would have been able to handle your wound."

"Thank you, but who are you two and what the hell is going on here?"

Of course, a lie, and Vallen's story of who they were and the possible reasons for them being here were boring. But, it was either this or have his cover blown, so he chose this...At least Ms. Thompson had very impressive assets. It really was the only thing to pay attention to as Vallen prattled on and on about theories of why they would be there, who was doing this, and why these gang members happened to be so psychotic.

"I see..."

"Where did you find that gun?" Ashley asked curiously.

This would be easy to bullshit.

"I managed to knock a man unconscious, and grab this and some clips off his body."

"And you know how to use it?"

This however, might not be easy.

"Of course. My Godfather taught me when I was a child."

Also, not far from the truth. However, Mr. Fernando Diaz, Carlos's godfather, only taught him how to shoot a rifle...He learned the pistol trade on his own.

"Good. Another man with a gun is very good, especially when it is being handled by someone who knows how to use firearms. I have this," he drew the .44 magnum he acquired earlier, "but I'm not too good with it."

"As long as you point it at the vatos who attack us, and not me or your lady friend, I think we'll do alright."

All three of them laughed.

"So, where to?"

"Not sure, we were gonna decide that, but then heard your gunshots."

"We could go to an apartment complex I saw about ten blocks back. It might be safer than this area." said Ashley. "I mean... We might find some more weapons or something..."

"That's not a bad idea," very surprised to hear this come from a big breasted brunette, but he did not show it. "We might find some heavier weapons to use."

"So it's settled then."

"Good," Carlos thought to himself. They don't suspect anything. Just the way he liked it.