On The Devil's Dole

If I ride hard and I ride through the night, I’ll reach Barstow by morning.

And there,

There, I’m gonna kill me a man.

Don’t know the guy. Never met him. Never had any hatred for him neither. All I have is his first name, an address, a list of things I’m supposed to say when I kill him.

Every week it’s the same thing. One name, one address, one list of things I forget as soon as I’ve read it to the poor sucker on the wrong end of my twelve gauge. Sometimes the name is someone just a few miles down the road, sometimes halfway across the country. Sometimes the name I get belongs to a girl, sometimes to a little kid, but most of them, most of the names I get are men, mid-thirties or forties, balding, in business or accounting, a job that puts their dirty hands in contact with a lot of easy money.

All of them have one thing in common.

All of them are sick.

The big man downstairs isn’t the type to volunteer details, and most things I remember when he does speak mean about as much to me as someone else’s roadkill. Way I understand it, there’s a storm coming, a real hellfire and brimstone storm that’s long overdue, and the plague that’s been leaking out of hell for the past six months is just the leading edge of that storm. The plague– it isn’t a physical sickness, isn’t caused by a virus or some mutated, weaponized strain of bacteria cooked up by men in a lab. It’s something else, something altogether different, something terrifying, demonic.

The last man I killed was Roger Harrison, 5012 Silverbirch Lane. The list was long, ten or twelve things I was supposed to remind Roger of before I killed him. Hardly got as far as sticking the barrel of my shotgun through the crack of the door before he turned, eyes bulging, stretching blood-shot and yellow. They all do that when they turn, but not usually until after they wait and beg, act scared, act repentant, realize I’m not there just to remind them of all the terrible things they’ve done in their lives. It’s the terrible things that make them ripe for the infection, or so I’ve been told. All the things they did to others that caught the eyes of the horrors festering and breeding inside of them, spreading, fighting for control of meat so sweet with sins. I guess word’s been getting around in hell about me, because they’ve started begging less and fighting more. I don’t expect my next target to go down easy. Hell, I almost hope he doesn’t. Been a long time since one of the horrors were smart or sly enough to get loose of hell and Old Scratch gave me a decent fight.

Never gets boring, the killing. Neither does the riding, the long, empty road between names. Never thought the Devil would have me hunting his horrors for him, but doing his dirty work keeps me on his dole, keeps me floating in burgers and booze, in gas and parts for my growling hog, keeps shells in my gun and brings the easy pussy that makes the whole ride worth while. Best work a guy like me could ever hope to get, especially considering the fact that I’m sick too. More than sick.

The hell-plague claimed me years ago.

It’s just too bad it doesn’t kill you when it takes you, only changes you into a steadily rotting slab of moving meat, strands your damned soul somewhere between life and death, somewhere the chorus of demonic voices can scratch out your senses and torture you with waking nightmares that make you wish for the mercy of a man like me.

A man with a shotgun who knows the horrors festering through you. A man with a shotgun sanctified to put you out of your misery, send you screaming to the hell you’ve built for yourself with a life full of spite, selfishness and sin.

This story is featured in...

Twisted Pulp Magazine Issue #41