Header 3 Read online

  HEADER 3

  Edward Lee

  &

  Ryan Harding

  Necro Publications

  — 2017 —

  | — | — |

  HEADER 3 © 2017 by Edward Lee & Ryan Harding

  Cover art © 2017 by Glenn Chadbourne

  This edition © 2017 Necro Publications

  ISBN: 978-1-944703-26-4

  LOC: 2017930085

  Book design & typesetting:

  David G. Barnett

  Fat Cat Graphic Design

  fatcatgraphicdesign.com

  Necro Publications

  5139 Maxon Terrace

  Sanford, FL 32771

  necropublications.com

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  — | — | —

  Dedication: David G. Barnett

  — | — | —

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  E.L: Bob Hinton and Alex, Frank and Ingrid Festa, Bartek Czartoryski, Matt Lee-Williams, Darren Prosser, Bob Strauss, everyone at Deadite, Robert Johnson at Old Nick, Melissa Bostaph, Chris from B&N, Ryan Harding, Old ER Surgeon, gargirl, Gambino Iglesias, Frank and Ingrid Festa, Troy Chambers, Matthew T. Carpenter, Tom Karpe, Diana Bowman, C. Dunn, moof3r, mec926, Stephen Brissette, J. Bjorne, Tommy Satterwhite, J. Bowen, missy99, Aut, A.Silver, Randolph Lewis II, Kenneth Sohl, Brian Pinkerton, crackjaw, EllieMaren, pesticupake, kresby, disturbian, Eli Brown (thanks for the Barry Richards stuff), mareveltepora, Traube7, Mrparka, and Wilum Pugmire (for saying nice things about Trolley No. 1852!), ttzuma, sikahtik, Demonizer, Kylie and Mark Hatmaker and Re-Voltaire, 27needles, bishopblack, chuckrios, AlexanderBeresford, dutchgorelover, postmant666, DecayedFace, DaFratHO, Darren Prosser, Qwee, Wes Southward, Monrozombi, Zlatko Geleski, David Speed.

  R.H.: Ryan would like to say thanks and hello to Querus Abuttu, Jack Bantry, Jarod Barbee, Dave Barnett, Jeff Burk, James Carroll, Suzanne Travola Delaney, Mark Gutmaker, Brian Keene, Ann Laymon, Shane McKenzie, Regina Mitchell, Jonathan Moon, Kim Myers, John Skipp, Bryan Smith, Paul Synuria II, Tristan Thorne, and Brent Zirnheld. And especially to Lee - thanks for sharing the drill!

  PROLOGUE

  Triple M hadn’t known what hit him, but it might as well have been a Mack truck. I must be seeing things from the gak, he thought—at least when he was able to think again. This idea made some sense: his moniker stood for Meth Man Mike. He sold lots of meth…but he’d used lots of it as well; hence his obvious disregard for the universal axiom don’t get high on your own supply. He’d thought for sure the night would be a cash cow but instead his efforts had left him tied up in the back of a van—with a headache and wet Levis—and the reason he thought he might be seeing things was because one of his abductors, a 300-pound redneck with a buzzcut sitting on the van bench, said, “Hey, Gut! This ’un here peed his pants!”

  The man behind the wheel grinned over his shoulder. “Likely as not, he’ll be shittin’ ’em too, Clyde. Just like his girly friend.”

  Here was the dilemma: Gut and Clyde both looked and sounded exactly alike. So either Triple M was seeing things or his dope-slinging excursion had been busted up by identical twins.

  He’d been ripped off a few times in the past (a hazard of his profession) but he’d never been abducted. It was almost like these two humongous guys had been onto him and Rumbun from the start.

  Rumbun, by the way, was Triple M’s squeeze and “business associate,” and the meaning of her moniker can probably be guessed. She had a good “nose” for users looking to cop, so she baited potential meth-heads with her smokin’ hot bod, and if they talked the right talk and proved themselves “cool,” she sent them down the road where Triple M waited to sell them all the product they wanted. The system worked very well.

  But not tonight.

  The one lummox named Gut—or that was Triple M’s best guess, anyway, but it could have been the other one—had moseyed down the road and good-naturedly greeted, “Hey, fella, how you doing this fine night?” but before Triple M could answer—

  WHAP!

  —a fist the size of a cantaloupe had introduced itself to the drug-slinger’s forehead, and he was on the ground seeing stars. Not quite unconscious, he heard a roar of engine noise, tires skidding on dirt-top, then next thing he knew he’d been tossed into a van like a sack of flour wearing a black Scarface T-shirt. His attacker stepped in, slammed the door, and the van roared off. The entire grab had taken less than a minute.

  Through the proverbial stars, Triple M saw Rumbun tied up and gagged under the bench. So she’d already been pinched before this guy had put the drop on Triple M. Smooth work, but…why? Had Triple M been more coherent at the time, he would’ve rejected the notion that these two fatsos were regional dealers themselves because they simply didn’t sport the vibe. Triple M knew slingers when he saw them, and these guys weren’t it. They reminded him instead of typical backwoods yokels.

  Therefore, what reason could explain their abduction of Triple M and Rumbun?

  A strong-arm heist? A rapo? But Triple M left most of his cash in the car, and they hadn’t even searched his pockets. And since Rumbun still had all her clothes on, well, rape didn’t appear to be the motive…

  Triple M would have a few more minutes to groggily wonder about this, but not many more minutes after that to wonder about anything at all.

  ««—»»

  The wooden double barn doors banged open as the skinny bagman in the Scarface shirt was dragged inside by two husky figures, then dropped on hay-strewn ground. It was a large barn, wanly lit by bare bulbs hanging overhead. One bulb swayed, throwing the shadows of several men.

  The skinny bagman groaned in the dirt, his face sufficiently bloodied.

  “Good job, fellas,” came a husky, enthusiastic drawl. “This ‘un here’s the bag’a walkin’ shit they called Triple M!”

  First it was the speaker’s bulbous face that bloomed into view, then three more identical bulbous faces grinned down at the night’s “acquisition. These faces, by the way, belong to a looming, boisterous tetrad known as the Larkins Brothers. These twenty-something boys were all 6’3”, fat, overalled rednecks with buzzcuts; they were also identical quadruplets. They all had the same huck-and-jive grin, the same beady brown eyes, the same Skoal-darkened teeth. Their names? Gut, Tucker, Horace, and Clyde, but good luck to anyone trying to tell them apart.

  “We catched the dumb sumbitch sellin’ the shit in the alley ‘hind Guder’s smoker,” Gut said. Or was it Horace?

  “Glad ya didn’t put him in!” exclaimed Clyde, or—no—perhaps that was Horace.

  Then Tucker scuffed closer and—THWACK!—kicked the squirming drug dealer between the shoulder blades. Or, well, perhaps it wasn’t Tucker at all, perhaps it was—

  What difference did it make!

  “Triple M, huh, well lemme tell ya sumthin’, Triple M. We know ya been sellin’ that meth shit ‘round town, and fact the matter is, we’se simply just cain’t have us none’a that, no sir.”

  Triple M gagged, groaning. “I didn’t sell nothin’…”

  “Been pushin’ that shit awhile’s what we heard,” one brother, probably Gut, said. “Tippin’ kids over right’n left, ruinin’ their lives and ruinin’ the town, turnin’ hard workin’ folks into junkies. Why, ole Joe Shaeffer offered to suck my dick just t’other day and he’s a church-goin’ fambly man!”

  “Actually, Joe ain’t a meth-head,” Tuc
ker informed him. “He just likes suckin’ him some dicks.”

  “Is that right? Well, now that you mention it, he shorely didn’t attach no price ta that offer. Well, be that as it may, Meth Makin’ Moron, drug runnin’ scumbags like you is poisonin’ our town and we’se right sick of it.”

  “No! That’s bullshit!” jabbered the captive.

  “Aw, we’se can prove it.” It was Clyde, beyond a doubt, who’d made this assertion. He slipped a Samsung Galaxy 4 out of his overalls. “See, I got me this slick pitcher of ya on my fancy phone, sellin’ it ta Connie Reed.” Then the mammoth quadruplet leaned over with the cell phone and showed Triple M the wares of his proof.

  On the cell phone screen, sure enough, there was the Scarface-shirted captive handing a minuscule packet to a young hillbilly girl with essentially a child’s face but breasts worthy of Playboy.

  Tucker’s voice boomed his irritation throughout the barn. “Connie Reed ain’t but 13, boy! What’s wrong with you? Hookin’ kids on the meth so’s ta get ’em whorin’ fer ya!”

  The dealer squirmed among several, well, several loogies in the dirt, as if the downward glare of the four brothers was the sun and Triple M was the ant under the magnifying glass. “I swear, man, I don’t deal nothin’! That was a pack of gum I gave her!”

  Tucker’s deep chuckle could’ve been the sound of an ill-maintained diesel motor chugging to start. “Pack’a gum? That what you’re sayin’, boy? Well, how’s ’bout we ask that cute li’l blondie girlfriend’a yers, see what she have ta say?”

  Gut dragged in a slim, impressively curved blonde in cut-off shorts, a dirty halter, and a gag through her mouth. Her wrists were tied, and her outward physical state suggested the bad end of a raucous physical encounter. The black-eye looked quite racoonish, and it was clear most of the spunk had been throttled out of her, for she barely had any energy left to resist.

  “Me’n Gut caught this sap-trap tryin’ ta hide round the alley once she made us,” Clyde expounded with a touch of pride in his drawl. “We mussed her up a tad for her effort, just for the fun of it.”

  Gut added with a hoarsy chuckle, “T’weren’t hard to find, neither, Tuck. She were leaning up against the wall but her tits was stickin’ out so far they plum gave her away!”

  A cacophony of laughter burst through the barn. Gut sat the very worn-out woman down in a chair, and, “Speakin’ of tits,” he said, “check these out,” and then his big hot-dog-sized fingers divorced the woman’s halter from the subjects of Gut’s observation.

  Tucker squinted at the anatomical marvel: breasts large as duckpin balls fronted by dark-pink nipples round as the bottom of a beer can. “Fer peter’s sake, brother! Them’s gotta be damn near the best set’a milkers I ever seed on a gal!”

  Horace concurred, “I’d write home about ’em if I weren’t already home!” and with that blaze of wit, more laughter exploded about them, and Horace gave his crotch a subconscious squeeze.

  It was no surprise, then, when the four captors each took a turn at fondling their charge’s breasts like patrons in the produce section. As for the woman, she just sat there without resistance, barely moving, her teary eyes wide over the gag.

  As Clyde exercised his turn at the non-consensual breast exam, an eyebrow rose as if some anomaly had been detected. “Well, no wonders why this gal’s dumplins is so big. They’se implants!”

  “Ya don’t say?” Gut remarked.

  And Horace added, “I thought somethin’ felt a bit off about ’em.”

  Tucker re-plied the breast again for a closer deliberation. “Danged if you ain’t right, Clyde. ’Tis a rare thing ‘round these parts, yes sir.”

  Gut scratched his buzzcut head in perplexity. “But what ’zactly is a implant, Tuck? What is it they’se plant in ’em?”

  “Bag’a salt water’s what I heard.”

  “No! Well ain’t that the oddest thing!” Gut replied.

  Tucker nodded with some further thought. “Odd is right, fellas, and damn unnatural, too. It give me a sure-fire hankerin’ of curiosity.” In a split-second, the giant man’s giant hand produced a prodigious folding knife, snapping it open with a magical expertise.

  Now some reaction found its way into the form of the woman, who tensed up in the chair and mewled beneath the gag. When she tried to rise, Gut’s hands clamped her throat and slammed her back down. “What’cha fixin’ ta do, Tuck?”

  “I reckon he’s got a mind to cut that tit right off,” Horace speculated.

  “No, no, fellas,” Tucker countered. “What I look like, a fuckin’ barbarian? Naw, I figgur I’ll just give that big gorgeous tit a jab, and then, Gut, you can put a good hard squeeze on it, and we’ll see what up’n comes out.”

  This information was met with unanimous murmurs of approval, then—schlup!—the knife was plunged once into the breast and as quickly withdrawn. The blonde women squealed, clenched up, and Gut’s hands encircled the fleshy orb and compressed upon it with considerable force.

  From the rent, a single plume of water shot a good ten feet, as if spat from a fountain.

  Awe and wonder dominated the expressions of the four brothers, and much hooting, hollering and high-fiving ensued. A very different expression was found on the face of the blond woman.

  “Damn, if that weren’t somethin’!” Tucker celebrated.

  And Horace, “Ain’t never seed nothin’ like it!”

  Gut licked at some of the water on his hand, then nodded. “And you was right, Tuck. Gal’s tits is plumb full up with salt water.”

  And the “gal” was now quite a sight, sidled over in the chair with her halter down, one breast stuck out grandly, the other flat as a proverbial pancake. The amount of blood effusing from the knife-slit was much less than one might expect…but that was beside the point.

  Tucker’s tone took on a sardonic edge. “Damn silly-ass world we live in, I’ll tell ya: gals spendin’ thousands’a dollars just to have their tits pumped up with salt water. Anyway, we’se had our fun, now it’s back ta business, fellas.”

  “Damn straight,” one of them assented, and gave the all-but-forgotten Triple M a hefty kick in the kidney.

  “Ugh!” went Triple M.

  Tucker re-addressed the now bleary-eyed blonde. He patted her cheek. “Sweetie? Now that we’se fixed up yer tit job, you need to tell us somethin’. This lowlife boyfriend’a yers? He the one you says been sellin’ meth?”

  Mouthing the word “yes!” against the gag, she wagged her head in the affirmative.

  “She’s a lyin ‘ho!” Triple M yelled. “I never saw this bitch before in my life!”

  Horace stared down at the guy, arms crossed. “Save your bullshit, fella. We ain’t got time fer you nor the girl. But just you hear this: You ever set foot in this town again, yer dead meat.”

  A great exhalation of relief poured out of Triple M. “I swear to God, man! I’ll leave town, I’ll never deal here again—never!”

  At that, Tucker clapped his hands together as if a great revelation had just been made. “Oh! So ya admit yer a worthless meth dealin’ dickface after all! Well ain’t that just peachy? Clyde? Gag this piece’a shit and hook him up.”

  “Shore thing, Tuck,” and then Clyde lashed the dealer’s hands together, grabbed a chain-hook, and attached it between the dealer’s wrists, all with such speed and precision that one would presume he’d done this before. A moment later, the unfortunate young man with the Scarface t-shirt was hanging before them all by the chain.

  Where before the brothers were all looking down, now they all looked up at Triple M. “I’m beggin’ you guys! Lemme go, I swear I’ll quit slinging. I’ll give you my whole stash, plus the five grand I got back at my apartment! My girl’ll let all of you teabag her! Please!”

  Tucker, by the way, for those to whom it had not yet occurred, was viewed as the leader of the quartet. After all, he was the oldest, having been ejected into the world through his dear mother’s vagina all of six seconds before his identical brothe
rs. Perhaps with this advanced age came wisdom and leadership traits. “We don’t want yer fuckin’ stash, boy, ‘cept to drop it in the outhouse, and we got no use fer ill-gotten gains. We’ll teabag yer girl without your say-so or hers neither. Naw, best we rough ya up a little, so’s ta teach you a lesson.”

  Clyde, Horace, and Gut then proceeded to strip Triple M bare as he hung before them.

  Next, Tucker informed the girl, “Sweetie? We’se don’t stand fer no drug dealin’ in our fine town, so’s just you watch what we do ta lover-boy here.”

  “Golf-ball job this time, Tuck?” Gut inquired.

  Then Horace: “Shit, I’se was hopin’ fer a raw-ballin’—”

  And Clyde: “Or a good ole fashion dick-gnarlin’ or box job—”

  But Tucker rejected these suggestions. “Naw, brothers. We done plenty of those and’ll do plenty more. See, I wanna make the very best impression on our pretty little one-titted guest.” He nodded resolutely. “Golf-ball job.”

  The order was given, and Clyde, Gut, and Horace all deposed themselves to their pre-assigned tasks. Clyde bopped Triple M once hard on the head, not enough to kill him but just enough to produce near unconsciousness, after which he put his knife to work, slicing around the drug-dealer’s chest just under the armpits. Then the blade gently glided around the lower neck and across the shoulders. When he was done, the intricate incision circumscribed Triple M’s body in a most tactical fashion. Blood flowed grandly, turning a spot on the dirt floor to crimson mud.

  “Lookin’ good,” Tucker appraised, standing to the girl’s side.

  Gut slipped the blade of his own knife carefully under the skin just over the young man’s shoulder blades and then, with a grotesque skill, he yanked some of the skin out farther until a “pocket” was formed.