Vultures

by Chuck Wendig

  The breath is caught in her lungs like a miner in a collapsing shaft. Vertigo spirals up through her and drops her ass down on the bench again as Louis, her Louis, dead Louis, steps in through the back, filling the exit.

  Already she sees that no, it’s not her Louis at all. This one doesn’t have the fake eye anymore—it’s just that filthy X made of electrical tape ill patched over the ruined socket. And this Louis has a hole in the side of his head, where Wren’s bullet entered his temple. Smoke drifts out of that hole, as if from a cigarette just stubbed out in an ashtray.

  The Trespasser grins. Pill bugs crawl across the flats of his yellow teeth the way they would across a split log gone rotten. He licks them, chews them, munch munch crunch.

  Her stomach roils with anger and fear.

  “You.” That’s all she can say right now. It’s the only word she can muster. Anything more would have her rage-puking as she leapt for this ephemeral spirit, this entity that up until very recently she half-figured was just a figment of her own imagination. The Trespasser. She wants to wrap her hands around its throat, even though she has no idea if it has a throat.

  “This is such a sad meeting,” the Trespasser says. “I hear you’ve gone and done it. Got yourself knocked up with a little piglet. Oink, oink.”

  “You did this. All of this.”

  “Not that part.” Not-Louis clucks his blue-black tongue. “You did that part yourself. But the rest of it, sure. I set up the dominoes and they fell . . . mostly where I wanted them.” The spirit’s one good eye casts toward her belly, and the disgust on the Trespasser’s face deepens. “I’m glad you got my message, Miriam.”

  “That’s what all that was?” she seethes. “A message?”

  “A message, that’s right.”

  “And tell me, you sick motherfucker, what was the message? I’m a little slow. My head’s been knocked around a few too many times so I’m not picking up what you’re putting down.”

  Not-Louis sniffs, leans up against the doorframe like he’s the cock of the walk. He says, “The message is, we aren’t done, you and me. You got nine months left on this lease, and that’s only if that little piggy doesn’t die coming out of your fucked-up baby-maker, baby. Kid doesn’t make it . . .” He takes a deep, satisfying breath. “Then you’ll be stuck with me, Peaches.”

  Fresh anger surges through her—but that black, demonic geyser of rage is shot through with something else, too: hope. Because here, the demon is telling her something. He’s telling her that what Mary Scissors said is true: if she can do this, if the child is born and if the child survives, then that’s it. It’s game over for the Trespasser. The curse is gone.

  It would mean that she’s free.

  That puts a big smile on her face.

  She stands, even as tentacles of shadow crawl into the ambulance like the tendrils of poison ivy vines set to fast-forward. Everything grows dark and the ambulance begins to rattle and bang, vibrating like there’s an earthquake under their feet. Outside, the asphalt begins to fracture. Trees begin to shudder and split with thunderous cracks. She steps forward slow and steady, one foot at a time, handcuffed hands held in front of her as she meets the Trespasser nose to nose. From him emanates the smell of rot and ruin: a pickled vinegar smell, sickly sweet, wildly sour, like the smell of roadkill, like bad meat left too long in the kitchen trash.

  “You sent her to me,” Miriam hisses. “Samantha. Her and Harriet. You put all this in motion. You’re trying to control me.”

  “I did some of that. I had to, killer. You’ve been trying to buck the leash. So, I’m trying a tighter collar.” The eyepatch made of electrical tape bulges and strains as something behind it threatens to push out. Little feelers like centipede legs wriggle free and tickle the air. All around, the tectonic shaking worsens—

  Trees begin to fall across the shattered road, only cratering the asphalt further. Dead leaves swing and swoon in the air. Her teeth clack. The sound is now a roar. The road begins to break and buckle.

  She has to yell to be heard:

  “I’m done with you. I’m almost free.”

  There. A spark of anger in the Trespasser’s one good eye. His jaw tightens and the tendons pull taut. The next words he speaks, he does so through clenched, half-rotten teeth: “Almost isn’t enough, you arrogant little bitch. I still got you. The message is that we still have work to do. Important work. You will not shirk your duties.”

  “I’m not doing your work anymore.”

  “What can I say? I have a few tricks left.”

  “Me too,” she yells. It’s a lie. She has nothing new, nothing to bring.

  “Wanna see one of mine?” he asks.

  “Bring it on,” she says, bold and with as much fake-ass bravado as she can muster—even though the thought of the Trespasser pulling another dead rabbit out of his hat chills her down to the marrow.

  Then, lickety-quick, Not-Louis is gone. One minute she’s face-to-face with him, smelling his sour stink, and the next—he’s vapor. The shadow tendrils disappear, too. The shaking has ended. The road behind is whole once more, as are the trees all around. None are broken. None have fallen.

  Once more, all is silent and still.

  A few lone flurries fall.

  The silence ends as a gunshot fills the night.

  Bang.

  FIVE

  SILLY RABBIT, TRICKS ARE FOR KIDS

  The gunshot startles her. Even now, after all that’s happened—it wasn’t even eight hours ago that she was being chased through the woods by an unstoppable, unkillable Harriet Adams as gunshots zipped through the trees all around her—she can’t help but feel jarred by it. Every part of her tenses, and a shrill tinnitus buzz fills her ears.

  Swallowing hard, she reaches out with her handcuffed hands, balancing herself against the back door of the ambulance as she steps out onto the old road with unsteady legs. More flurries fall, fat flakes whirling about like white-winged moths. Shoulder against the back of the ambulance, she turns the corner toward the driver side and—

  Bootbrush lies face up on the road. The wind ruffles that mustache as his dead eyes stare up at the stars. A hole in the middle of his head is like a third eye, an opened chakra, aware only of death.

  His head rests on a pillow of his own brains.

  Standing above him—striding his body lke a triumphant conqueror—is the paramedic, Jimmy. He’s got a small snub-nose revolver in his hand. Bootbrush’s own gun, a boxy pistol, remains in its holster. Jimmy must have his own gun—unsurprising up here in these parts, she guesses.

  Jimmy is grinning like a fool. His eyes are wide and white. Dark hair is tousled by the winter wind. Jimmy has a big awkward overbite, giving a sinister, clownish vibe to that fool’s grin.

  Miriam just stands there, unsure what this is or what to do.

  “Why?” she asks, her voice a craggy, drawn-out croak.

  “I told you I have new tricks.”

  That voice. It isn’t Jimmy’s. It comes out of him with a Southern drawl. It’s Louis’s voice. Slow, soft, comforting once. Corrupted, now.

  It’s him. It. The Trespasser.

  The demon, the ghost, whatever the Trespasser is: it’s inside the paramedic. It’s taken him over.

  “You again,” she says. What hope she had is flagging now—like putting your hand over a flashlight to darken the beam that comes from it.

  Jimmy shrugs. “Me again.”

  “This is what you did to Samantha, isn’t it? You got inside her. You . . . made her do things.”

  “Took me a while with that one,” Jimmy says with a playful shrug, his body language saying, Nah, not a big deal. “She was my first, if you’re wondering. She had holes in her soul, and I was able to sneak in like a little skittering mouse.” With his free hand, Not-Jimmy mimics a mouse running, the fingers wiggling like little legs. “Dink, dink, dink! Jimmy here was easier. So much easier. I was able to chew my own way in much faster. Jimmy has problems. His daddy beat him, abused him, then
left him. Poor Jimmy. Hates himself so bad, it’s worn holes in him, and now I’m in there, wriggling around. I’m wondering if I can do it with anyone. I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”

  “Leave me alone. Leave them all alone.”

  “Not until we’re done.”

  “We’re done.”

  Jimmy brays with laughter—loud and obnoxious, filling the air, echoing off the trees. “I’ll be seeing you, Miriam.”

  Then the paramedic puts the revolver under his chin.

  Miriam cries out, reaching with her cuffed hands—

  “Don’t feel bad for ol’ Jimmy!” the paramedic hoots.

  The gun pops. Jimmy’s head shakes like a coconut on a kicked tree. A small fountain of blood and gray matter sprays up from the top of his skull.

  He drops. The gun clacks against the asphalt.

  SIX

  SPOILER WARNING: SHE SAYS FUCK IT AND RUNS

  Miriam stands there for ten seconds.

  Ten seconds in which no tears fall, because she has no more in her.

  Ten seconds in which she regards the death of the two men in front of her, one sleeping on his own brains, the other staring up with dead eyes at a dripping red mess oozing down the side of the ambulance.

  Ten seconds in which she wonders how long it’ll take those brains and that blood to freeze solid.

  Ten seconds in which she has to decide whether or not she’s going to sit here and call this in and wait for the authorities—which is the smart thing to do, the path of least resistance, the path that will earn her none of the blame because it’s not like her prints are on that gun—or whether or not she’s going to say fuck it and run.

  The eleventh second comes, and she has her decision.

  She has a chance. The baby is her chance. This kid, whoever he or she is or will be, is her way out. The child is the key to a very stubborn lock.

  The curse has to go. The Trespasser can get fucked.

  Buy the ticket, take the ride.

  She’s going to run.

  Miriam hurries over to Bootbrush and rifles through his pockets until she finds the dead cop’s keys—and with it, the key to the cuffs. She finds it, jingly-jangle, pops the lock, and the metal cuffs drop to the road, clickety-clack. Miriam gives her arms a little shake to stir the blood back into her hands. They tingle, pins and needles, as they come back to life.

  Then, in his other pocket: a cell phone. It’s a crummy clamshell model, beaten all to hell. On a lark, she tries the paramedic’s pocket, and that’s the way to go: he’s got an iPhone. She’s not really up on her technology, but she knows the iPhone beats the clamshell in a technology-based game of rock-paper-scissors, so she pockets that one, instead.

  It’s cold. The snow falling isn’t covering the road yet, but it will soon enough. She shivers, realizing that she can’t just hightail it out of here on foot. Which means—

  “I’m going to have to steal an ambulance,” she says to no one but whatever forest creatures slumber in the wintry dark.

  It’s a terrible idea, stealing an ambulance.

  But it’s pretty much the only idea, and it’s better than freezing to death out here on this Pennsyltucky road to nowhere.

  Miriam steals the ambulance.

  SEVEN

  COFFEE AND CIGARETTES

  By sunup, she’s in Maryland. She ditches the ambulance behind a closed-up gas station at the north end of a town called Manchester. The snow has stopped, but the wind has got teeth, and soon as she steps out of the vehicle, it takes a bite.

  The ambulance is a worry. She has no idea if they LoJack these goddamn things or if they have some secret way to track them, but given that it looks like it’s at least ten years old and it has 255,000 miles on it, she’s hoping like hell nobody will find this thing for a good long while.

  Miriam walks in the bitter, biting wind.

  She wraps a blanket from inside the ambulance around her. Every step is painful. Pain from under her armpit. Pain from where Harriet beat her ass. Her skull throbs like it’s about to come apart at the seams. Pain in her heart, too, because at this point she’s lost near to everything and everyone.

  Everyone except Gabby.

  Gabby, who she hopes will be here soon.

  She walks about a mile past gray clapboard houses that are part of the wreckage of what was fifty years ago a prosperous America, and farther down she spies a truck-stop diner. It’ll do. She uses Bootbrush’s phone to text Gabby the diner name. Then she turns the phone off and breaks it against the ragged metal corner of an old rusted dumpster behind the restaurant before tossing it in with the rest of the trash.

  Inside, the diner is warm and spare. Everything is old linoleum and cheap plastic. Country-bumpkin decor hangs on the walls, as do random household implements from days past: a slotted spoon, a sifter, a washboard. Interspersed is crab imagery: a crab in a chef’s hat, a crab with fork and knife, a crab in a pot. Crabs happily eating crabs. Crabs happily being eaten by crabs. Whatever.

  Miriam has no wallet, no ID, not any damn thing. But she goes in and lets them seat her anyway, even though they give her eyes like she’s a vagrant. (Which is more or less true at this point.) She sits, orders coffee and a big plate of bacon and eggs, and eats like they just made breakfast illegal.

  The coffee tastes like road tar thinned with battery acid, which is how she likes it. The bacon is salty, the eggs are good, and she eats both so fast, she barely tastes them. She orders more food after—near the counter they have one of those rotating glass cases of countless cakes and pies, so she asks for a slice of apple pie with some ice cream. The waitress is a young black woman with her hair done up in little braids, and as she leans in for a coffee refill, Miriam lets her hand brush the waitress’s hand and—

  —in thirty years the woman’s hand, now wrinkled, struggles while reaching for the oxygen tank she needs to get her air, but she can’t quite reach the nose tubes from the hook near the nightstand. A pack of cigarettes sits nearby, the cigarettes spilling out like bones from broken fingers. The oxygen compressor hisses and hushes and gushes, and she can’t breathe, not at all. Every part of her feels closed off: invisible hands around her throat, an imaginary box of books placed square on her chest. The blood pumps loud in her ears, louder than the compressor, hiss hush gush, hiss hush gush, and then she’s thinking, this is what it must be like to drown, and that’s it, she’s done, dragged down by the undertow of her own failing lungs—

  Miriam shudders. The vision: it’s not as good as a hit from a cigarette, but for the moment, it’ll do. She clears her throat and says abruptly, “You should quit smoking. Sooner rather than later.”

  The waitress reels, suddenly taken aback. “You don’t get to tell me that.” A pause as she regards Miriam with (totally reasonable) suspicion. “And I don’t smoke.”

  Miriam shrugs. “You do. I can smell the ghost of nicotine on your fingers, and lady, I gotta tell you, I’d drown a kitten for a smoke right now, but I had to quit, so I quit. I’m telling you this and you already know it, you already know it’ll kill you someday, and maybe you care, maybe you don’t, and truly, it probably doesn’t matter what some crazy twat customer like me says. I’m just saying: quit smoking. Maybe you’ll buy yourself some years.”

  The waitress stands there, scowling. “The worst years.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The ones at the end are the worst. I’d rather smoke now and lose those, live my life how I like.”

  Miriam shrugs. “I get it. I do. I thought that way once too, and maybe sometimes still think that way. Thing is, it’s bullshit. Everybody has their last years, whether they smoke or don’t, whether they live to a hundred or live to twenty-one, and the last years, years of cancer or emphysema or drowning in your own lungs, they’re gonna be worse for you than for other people. That’s all I’m saying. Do what you want with it.”

  “I’ll think about it,” the waitress says, guardedly.

  “Okay,” Miriam says. And she b
elieves the waitress. She will think about it. But she won’t change. Because fate is fate.

  “You’re gonna give me a real tip and not this life-improvement bullshit, right?”

  “Sure,” Miriam lies, because she has literally no money.

  As the waitress walks away, Miriam sees the front door of the diner open up, the little bell going ding-da-ding.

  Miriam’s heart rises in her chest like a bird.

  It’s her.

  Seeing Gabby coming in through the front gives her a small island of peace in these turbulent seas—for just a moment, she can pretend that everything else that has happened and is happening does not matter. Gabby: her anchor, her port in the storm, her oasis. Gabby with the bleach-blond hair done up like it’s a wave about to crest over her scarred-up face. Gabby with the puffy winter coat that goes viiip voop zip as she walks.

  Miriam launches herself to standing—and the injury under her arm suddenly makes a sound like peeling masking tape, and as she lifts her arm way a bird holds up a busted wing, she sees Gabby’s eyes go right to it.

  “You’re bleeding,” Gabby says, sotto voce.

  “Am I? Oh.” Miriam looks, lifting her arm. Red spreads like spilled wine. “I like to think of it as a cleanse. I’m purging toxins. It’s all the rage. Acai berry enemas and bloodletting yourself.”

  “Miriam, we should go.”

  “I have no money, and I bought food.”

  Gabby offers a stiff but sympathetic smile. Then, with the patience of a saint, Gabby lays down money on the table before coming back to put her arm around Miriam’s shoulders. “C’mon, Miss Black, time to hit the road.”

  “I bought pie. Can we wait for the pie?”

  “I don’t think we can.”

  “Shit.” She pouts. “Where we going?”

  “Where else?”

  “Oh, please say it’s a cheap, shit-ass motel.”

  “It’s a cheap, shit-ass motel.”

  Miriam gives her cheek a little kiss. “I’ve missed you, Gabs.”