Killers - Blake Crouch [25]
Luther walked into the barn, and as he reached the lantern’s field of illumination, he stopped.
Donaldson saw what he held. He said, “Oh shit.”
“Drop the pitchfork,” Luther said. His face was swollen, his eyes red as strawberries. The gun in his hand was a semi-auto.
“You mean drop this, or you shoot me? Don’t be an asshole, Luther. I’d rather have you shoot me than—”
The first shot blew out Donaldson’s right knee, toppling him over.
Luther strolled over while Donaldson howled.
“Still rather have me shoot you, Fat Man?”
He aimed and fired. Donaldson’s left knee exploded.
A feeble, breathy sound caught Luther’s attention. He turned and saw a smile on Lucy’s face.
She was laughing.
“Knees are supposed to hurt the most,” Luther said. “Tell me if that’s true.”
Two more shots, and Lucy’s laughter became sobbing.
Luther went to the wall and chose a tool to play with.
After twenty minutes of exhausting his imagination with that one, he went on to get another.
On Luther’s third tool, Donaldson went into cardiac arrest.
Happily, Luther kept a portable defibrillator in his car, and it only took three shocks to get the fat man’s ticker back on track.
Then he started in again.
Dawn approached.
Soon there wasn’t much Luther could do, even trying really hard, to illicit more screams from the duo.
Donaldson tried to say something but it came out too soft for Lucy to understand.
They lay side-by-side on the floor of the barn. There were bits of them everywhere.
Lucy could barely speak.
“What…D?”
“Is…he…gone?”
“I think so.”
The barn was quiet. Somewhere, across the field, a rooster was arguing with the sun.
“Why aren’t we dead yet?” Lucy asked.
“Because your friend is very…very…” Donaldson coughed up a chunk of something. “Good.”
“I can’t feel anything anymore,” Lucy said.
“Me neither.”
“I believe I can fix that.” Luther had returned.
He held a red plastic container.
“I’ve read that in most witch burnings, the victim died quickly from smoke inhalation,” Luther said. “Or from breathing in the fire itself. So I’m going to try my best to keep the flames on just the lower parts of your bodies.”
Luther poured gas on them. Donaldson turned his head, caught Lucy’s eyes.
“You know what, little girl? I never should have picked your ass up.”
“Hitchhiking can be dangerous, D,” Lucy said.
They reached for each other and held hands as they burned.
For the continuing adventures of Luther, read Desert Places, Locked Doors, Break You, Shaken, and Stirred, the upcoming Jack Daniels/Andrew Z. Thomas thriller by Blake Crouch and J.A. Konrath
For the previous adventures of Lucy and Donaldson, read Serial Uncut by Blake Crouch and Jack Kilborn
In Which Blake and Joe Interview Each Other About the Experience of Writing KILLERS…
Joe: So here were are again. Back in 2009 we wrote SERIAL as a kind of experiment. We each created a serial killer, wrote a section without showing each other, then pitted our creations against one another to see who would win. I’m astonished that a simple 7000 word story done for our own amusement has garnered so much attention. We sold film rights, audio rights, appeared in an anthology with Stephen King (SHIVERS VI), and have given away over 350,000 ebooks. Why do you think so many people liked that story?
Blake: I think most people have a dark side, and that stories like this give them an opportunity to safely explore it.
KILLERS turned out to be quite a bit longer than SERIAL, or even really what we intended.
Joe: We had more to do in KILLERS. In SERIAL, we had to establish our baddies, then try to kill each other. In KILLERS we had to establish them, help them escape, pit them against each other, then bring in Luther. Speaking of Luther…
Blake: My favorite villain I’ve written (although Lucy is a close second) in terms of sheer writing fun. One of the interesting things we did with KILLERS, was take these two depraved human beings, two hunters (Lucy and Donaldson) and then turn the tables on them.