Deadliest of the Species Read online

  Tim Wilder’s ex-wife got the kids, the money, and the house. With only his Camaro, the clothes on his back, and a handful of cash, he heads west in search of a fresh start in life. As he grows tired he stops in a small, quaint town nestled deep in the desert mountains: a place called Rapture.

  And he soon learns he was better off dealing with his wife.

  The women of Rapture are not what they seem, and they run the town with iron fists. They steel Tim’s car, his money, and the rest of his clothes, stranding him there. Then they murder his only friend.

  Only then does he learn of their dark secret, and the true reason their leader, Alexandra, refuses to let him leave…

  DEADLIEST OF THE SPECIES

  Copyright © 2001 by Michael Oliveri

  Dust Jacket art and Design Copyright © 2001 by Kenneth Waters

  All rights reserved

  Interior design Copyright © 2001 by V13

  FIRST EDITION

  MARCH 2001

  ISBN

  1-930595-03-4

  VOX13

  2233 Mount Vernon Road

  Ringgold, GA 30710

  Produced in association with

  Bereshith Publishing

  PO Box 2366

  Centreville, VA 20122-2366

  www.kennethwaters.com/vox13.htm

  [email protected]

  Dedicated to my incredible wife, Melissa

  Her patience and support goes beyond all human expectation

  I love you

  Thanks to: John “Where’s the next chapter, byatch?!” Roling; fellow musketeers Brian Keene, Geoff Cooper, and Mike Huyck; Gina, Feo, Weston, Eoghain, Ryan, James F., and the rest of the Cabal; Tom Piccirilli (check out that wicked intro); Ann & Kelly Laymon (for both Baltimore and L.A.); Mark Lancaster, chauffer and tour guide extraordinaire; Kenneth Waters for having the faith to publish this piece of sh—er, fine piece of literature; and of course all you fine folks who took a chance on a first-time novelist.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  INTRODUCTION

  The so-called “battle of the sexes” has long been fodder for horror tales as well as for sociopolitical manifestoes. Usually it’s the strong-as-iron yet still relatively hapless female being chased by the creature/critter/inhuman killer/group of Satanists through the dark woods, closed department store or locked office building. The feminists rage, and the predominantly male audience (whether reader or viewer) gets its fill of titillation via gratuitous shower scenes or having the stalked heroine forced to face her attackers wearing nothing more than a knotted blouse and short-shorts.

  But consider Jack Ketchum’s LADIES’ NIGHT if you want a twist on the theme, this time with the women wreaking their vengeance across the terrified male population of New York City. Or Edward Lee’s SUCCUBI or COVEN, where groups of seductive women prey on often corrupted and contemptible men.

  Or Mike Oliveri’s DEADLIEST OF THE SPECIES.

  Talk about empowered women.

  First off, for everybody out there who has never actually met a horror writer, you ought to know this about those who make up field. Most of the horror writing community is constituted of cherubs. Sweet-faced, gentle-voiced, friendly, giving authors who just happen to mine the darkest niches of their minds and souls. Dick Laymon, who wrote some of the most vicious, wild scenes of outright bloody mayhem and fun (yes, that’s right, I said fun) depravity was a generous, kind, and nurturing individual. Off the top of my head I can come up with names like Simon Clark, Tim Lebbon, Gerard Houarner, and Doug Clegg, all of whom are amiable and gracious fellows. Each has an infectious laugh, a quiet demeanor, and a giving personality. You’re not likely to find a nicer bunch of guys anywhere else in any other vocation.

  And if you had to take a guess at just who might be the cherub-iest?

  Well, it’s a hard call, but Mike Oliveri is definitely at the front of the pack.

  Let’s talk about Mike for a minute. Like all of us, he’s paid his dues for his art. Publishing in the small presses, making the hours to write after a full day of work, doing what he could to publicize his talents. And now he’s ready to break huge.

  In DEADLIEST OF THE SPECIES you’ll be drawn into the bizarre town of Rapture, where a stranger finds himself trapped in an unusual social order. This is a desert community where the occult and fear reigns. At first the terrors are subtle but soon they grow significant, and behind each horror is the alluring smile of a deadly woman.

  I should also take a minute to mention that the book in your hand is one of the premier attractions from the new publishing house VOX13, owned by noted artist Kenneth Waters. It’s bound to be one of the first of many to make waves in the independent press.

  So, you’re in on the ground floor of a new enterprise featuring a new voice of horror. Sit back and enjoy the desert sun on your face, the cool breeze working at the back of your neck as the night begins to fall…and you enter a place of beauty, wickedness and wonder known as Rapture.

  Tom Piccirilli

  “The female of the species is more deadly than the male.” –Rudyard Kipling

  “Let man fear the woman when she loves: then she makes any sacrifice, and everything else seems without value to her. Let man fear woman when she hates: for deep down in his soul man is merely evil, while woman is bad.” –Friedrich Nietzsche

  Chapter One

  A cloud of dust pursued Tim’s speeding car across the barren landscape. The moon, not quite full, illuminated the almost endless stretch of asphalt disappearing into the distance ahead of him. He passed out of range of any decent radio stations an hour or so ago, and the fuel gauge needle bobbed precariously over the big red E.

  He could hardly stand the silence, and he wished he still had his Blazer and CD changer. His ex-wife, Laura had it now. She also had the house, the kids, the furniture, etc., etc., etc. Maybe he should have been the one fucking the lawyer on the side.

  The clothes he now wore brought him back to his days of pot, beer, and heavy metal, shortly before he met Laura eight years ago. He had forgotten how comfortable jeans and a T-shirt were compared to the stifling business suit he had been wearing day-to-day.

  Only the black, rebuilt 1978 Chevy Camaro he drove now remained of his marriage. Good thing he never thought to give her a key to the storage garage. He thought back to the times they made love in this car, and it sickened him to think of his ex and her new lawyer husband going at it in the back seat.

  The Camaro’s engine coughed once, rudely snapping him back to the present. The first rays of dawn just began to reach over the horizon. On the dashboard, the fuel gauge lamp burned like an angry red eye. The needle firmly pressed itself into the left side of the plastic window. Fortunately, a towering sign bearing a single word—“gas”—appeared over a hill just ahead.

  He gunned the engine one last time as he came over the crest, then slid the gear shift to neutral and coasted down the far side of the hill. He turned into the station, braked gently alongside one of the ancient pumps and killed th
e engine. He noticed the pump meter numbers were the old-style spinning analog dials, which would have been replaced for digital meters long ago by any station firmly rooted in the present.

  As Tim stepped out of the car, a hunched shadow detached itself from a rickety shack at the rear of the lot and shuffled over. “Hold on there, stranger,” an aged voice crackled. “This place is still full service.”

  Tim stepped away from the pump and leaned back against the hood of his car as the old man came into the light. His face looked as dry and cracked as the desert hardpan beyond the road. Despite hands twisted by arthritis, he managed to remove the fuel cap and insert the pump into the tank with relative ease. The pump made soft clunking noises as it labored to refill the tank.

  “So what brings you by?” the old man asked conversationally. His accent turned the last word into “bah.”

  Tim raised his eyebrows. Good question. “Oh, just traveling. You know, seeing the states and so forth.”

  The old man nodded. “Not much to see ’round these parts, is there?” He cackled loudly.

  Tim smiled politely, turning away to roll his eyes. Out on the dark horizon, a dim light glowed over the hilltops. He noticed a T intersection just past the service center, the perpendicular road winding out toward the hills. Two large, faded detour signs mounted on rotting wooden construction horses blocked the road, but the asphalt surface seemed to be in good repair. If that glow came from a town, and the road was not really in bad shape, he could be in a soft bed by the time the sun cleared the horizon.

  “What’s over there?” Tim asked the aged attendant, pointing out toward the glow.

  “Nothing,” the old man snapped harshly. “You can’t head out that way.”

  Puzzled by the man’s sudden change in disposition, Tim turned and looked over his shoulder. “What?”

  “Nothin’s out there but death. Death and wimmen.”

  Death and women? This guy’s nuts, Tim thought. “Well, where else can I get a place to sleep for the day?”

  “There’s a town up the road a piece, only ’bout an hour’s ride I reckon. You can shack up out there.”

  “An hour? Man, I can probably make it to that ridge out there in a half hour or less.” Tim turned back to the glow, eyeballing the distance. He heard a soft click behind him, and turned back to find the old man leveling a gun at his belly, its hammer cocked back.

  The pistol, possibly a Civil War era revolver, looked as though it would just as soon explode as loose a bullet, but Tim thought it best not to take any chances. The old man’s shaky grip on the piece did not add to his confidence either.

  “You may as well put this to yer head now, stranger, and scatter your brains for the buzzards,” the old man said seriously. His face went deathly pale, and his eyes bulged madly. “Otherwise, who knows what they’ll feed you to out there.”

  Tim looked from the gun barrel to the old man and back again, considering what he should do next. With a final loud clunk, the pump switched itself off. Inspiration struck.

  “You know, maybe you’re right. I don’t know what’s out there. Maybe I would be better off taking your advice.” Slowly, he removed the pump handle and placed it on its cradle. Without taking his eyes off the old man, he slid a twenty dollar bill out of the small wad in his pocket and pressed it into the attendant’s free hand, praying it would be enough to cover the gas and a fair tip.

  The old man nodded. “Good boy. It’s always best to respect yer elders. We knows what’s best.” He leaned forward into Tim’s face, baring a row of filthy, rotten teeth, between which came a foul odor unlike any Tim had smelled before. “’Cuz I been out there before, and I ain’t never goin’ back! And I suggest others do the same!”

  Shaking, Tim jumped in the car, gunned the engine, and raced out of the lot. As he neared the side road he wrenched the wheel to the side, jumped sand and gravel corner, and cut behind the signs. He looked over his shoulder and saw the old man jumping and howling, his words distance and dust.

  Tim shook his head in disbelief. “Crazy old bastard,” he muttered.

  Twenty minutes later he started up the mountainside on a winding road that inclined rather sharply. As he rounded each bend, he prayed an avalanche had not blocked his passage. The air blowing from his vent grew cooler and, as he reached over to turn the grill away from him, he realized the humidity increased. The dry desert air he had become accustomed to all but faded. A function of the altitude? he thought.

  He shrugged, finally rounding one last bend and over a crest to what appeared to be the opposite side of the mountains. Below, a broad valley stretched out into the distance, nestled into the mountains and enveloped by cliffs. He saw a fair-sized town at the center of the valley, its streets and city blocks laid out in neat, orderly rows. The lit streetlamps and signs still glowed in the dawn sunlight.

  Most surprising, however, were the vast patches of green throughout the town, one of which resembled a large park. More greenery surrounded the town: large patches of woodland, row upon row of crops, and a long meadow.

  He thought it nothing short of miraculous that these people managed to grow any vegetation out here, for he hardly even spotted any cacti over the past few miles. But, biology having been one of his poor subjects in school, especially in relation to the plant kingdom, he dismissed the half-baked ideas and theories that already began to form in his head and concentrated on the road down to the town.

  Like the road up, the road down did not level off or straighten out until it reached ground level. But the trip down was significantly shorter, suggesting the valley floor must be higher than the desert land outside. The road leveled off as it turned toward the town, and Tim found himself passing between two large fields of vegetables: beans or sprouts of some sort on his right and corn on his left. Irrigation way out here must be a bitch, he decided.

  He rolled down his window and thrust out his arm, waving his hand in the air flow. It felt pleasantly warm outside, and the air seemed clean and fresh. Definitely a welcome change from the desert climate he dealt with for two days. He figured after dinner (breakfast?) and a nap, he would take a long walk around, maybe do some shopping for some new clothes. Hell, maybe this could be the kind of place he was looking for. Quiet, secluded, no rush of city life. It was worth some thought.

  He heard a strange sound coming from the cornfield. He let off the accelerator and strained his neck to peer out over the stalks. Far in the distance, a large tractor made its way through the field. No, it did not make the sound he heard. He kept driving, listening hard. Several seconds later he heard it again. A sort of groan, low and mournful.

  A human figure mounted on a T-shaped wooden rack rose above the stalks. Tim’s heart leapt before he realized it could only be a scarecrow. A blackbird sat contentedly on its shoulder, regarding Tim and his car with caution. The moan came a third time, from the scarecrow, and its head suddenly rolled off one shoulder to droop over its chest. A shudder ran down Tim’s spine. Surely, both the sound and the movement were a trick of the wind. The blackbird pecked at the side of the figure’s head.

  Tim accelerated, putting some distance between himself and the eerie sight. Whistling softly, he rounded a leisurely curve that took him into the town proper. He passed a large, decorative wooden sign depicting a smiling Carol Brady-type woman holding open arms toward the reader. A bas relief, block-lettered passage beside the woman read:

  Welcome to Rapture

  pop. 1503

  “When one finds a worthy wife, her value is far beyond pearls.

  Her husband, entrusting his heart to her, has an unfailing prize.”

  —Proverbs 31, 10-11

  “Please,” Tim muttered in disgust. “Obviously they’ve never met my wife before.”

  He spotted a street sign up ahead, marking the cross street as Main Street. He took a right, figuring the downtown area would lie somewhere on Main. After a few blocks of residential houses, all well-kept with handsomely-landscaped yards, he did inde
ed reach downtown Rapture.

  The fire station, all sparkling glass and shiny metal, stood proudly to his right, while the bulky police station loomed watchfully over his left shoulder. He passed the post office, a small brick building with two shiny blue mailboxes standing at attention outside the front door. The windows of the next building, an elementary school, had windows decorated with construction paper and class projects. A memorial statue of a beautiful woman stood at the center of the large walk, but he passed too quickly to read the plaque mounted to the pedestal. A public library stood across the street, its walls lined with beds of colorful flowers. A large white gazebo rested in a separate flower garden to one side of the building.

  Beyond these buildings he found more residential streets. A small street sign with an arrow indicated the direction of the middle and high schools, and another the city park. He passed a large cemetery, especially for a community of only fifteen hundred people. Most of the gravestones looked old and rather crudely made, but here and there shiny new marble slabs rose above the others. There were quite a few elegant memorials as well, from small statues to short walls with elaborate murals. Even a small fountain adorned one site. At the rear of the cemetery he could see three mausoleums, one of which was overgrown with ivy and weeds.

  A short distance beyond the cemetery and across the street Tim found a church. To his surprise (and even dismay), he found the place to be in rather shabby condition, Crabgrass overran the front lawn and grew to a considerable length compared to the immaculately-landscaped lawns of the neighboring homes. The steeple and roof badly needed to be reshingled and the white paint on the walls peeled in several places. Ivy crept up the side of one wall, and weeds poked through cracks in the concrete sidewalk and stairs. One shattered stained-glass window had been haphazardly boarded over. Someone removed several letters from the sign out front, leaving whatever message had been there unintelligible.

  Tim thought it strange that a town with a biblical quote on its welcome sign would allow a church to fall into such disrepair. He had not attended church for years, but had enough respect for his Roman Catholic upbringing to be a little angry with the townspeople for letting this happen. The rectory, facing out onto the next street, appeared to be in much the same condition. He wondered if the priest was one of those bastards that takes all the money and ignores the church and its congregation.