Dead Meat

by Joseph M. Monks

  Other fights were breaking out, and worse. Over in the corner, Jill Wylie was pinned to a table by a couple of guys Jesse didn’t recognize. From Douglasville, maybe? Sheridan Falls? He couldn’t tell. They were swarming over Jill, and it reminded him of that Jodie Foster movie, the one where she got raped on the pinball machine. These guys sure weren’t interested in sex, though.

  These strangers had gone all cannibal, too...

  Jill’s screams snapped Jesse from his reverie and cleared his mind some. Across from the pass-through window, on the opposite side of the diner, Ray Morgan had bones—Jesus Christ on a crutch, fucking bones—sticking out of his left arm, and his shrieks were almost as shrill as 15 year old Jill’s. What the hell had happened? Had a bomb gone off? Jesse had heard about all sorts of wacky stuff that happened when bombs went off, and more than a couple of local boys had come back from Iraq and Afghanistan warped. He hadn’t heard any explosion, though. And it must’ve happened close by, he thought, for all these folks to have wound up at the Coach. If that was shrapnel in Cooper Riley’s face, and something had blown the bejesus out of Ray Morgan’s arm, well, that’d explain it, wouldn’t it?

  But…nobody’d said anything. No one had been talking about it. In a town where damn near every man, woman and child showed up to watch a rotting old building burn down, you couldn’t very well keep an explosion secret. If a bomb had gone off, well, the Coach would’ve been packed. It would’ve been louder’n New Year’s in here.

  Jesse turned. It felt like he was doing it in slow-motion, but at least the feeling of being out of his own body was gone. Manuel, the dish washer, was standing by the door, gazing out at the ruckus. Jesse thought his vision was beginning to go funny on him, but then realized that no, nothing was wrong with his sight. It was Manuel. He was shaking. Trembling with fright. Jesse half expected Manuel to start screaming, too. But he didn’t. Instead, he quietly stepped back from the door, which made a raff-raff-raff sound as it slowly lost momentum. He caught Jesse watching him.

  “Madre de dios,” Manny whispered, forgetting the English-only-while-on-duty rule. “Los muertos caminan! Los muertos caminan!”

  He was clutching a cross, fist clenched tight over his heart, the crucified Jesus dangling from a fine, gold chain. Manny was Mexican, had a year-‘round tan that never seemed to fade. But not now. At the moment, Manny’s skin was the color of catfish belly.

  Jilly shrieked again, and Jesse turned his attention back to the floor, away from the dish washer. One of the out-of-towners was hunched over the high school girl, and Jesse couldn’t see what he was doing. Jilly’s ear-piercing screams suddenly halted. The sound Jesse heard in their wake reminded him of the noise defrosted sausages made when he dumped a pile on the butcher block. Wet and sloppy, like the guts falling out of a rotten melon.

  The stranger reared back. Dangling from his teeth was a loop of Jilly’s intestine. More of her innards sloshed onto the table as the men on either side of her dug into a cavernous gut wound, scooping out handfuls of warm viscera. Jilly’s eyes were rolling around, and she wasn’t fighting back no more, but she was still twitching…still alive.

  Jesse’s feet unglued themselves from the floor. He shot a glance Manny’s way, ready to tell him what to do. No luck there. Manny was gone. The back door to the diner stood open, letting in flies.

  No matter, Jesse thought. Pa was with him. That’s all he needed. Taking up the cleaver, he shoved through the swinging door with his rage and a dead man’s ghost watching his back. He wouldn’t run, like Manny had. Pa had taught him better. He could deal with this, just like everything else in his life that had been hard. That had seemed impossible. Mama runnin’ off. Pa eating his thirty-ought-six. Prison. Knowing that Lucy Parnell would never turn that dazzling smile of hers his way. He knew he could handle it, because despite all the screaming and yelling and crying and glass breaking, he could still hear Pa’s words, echoing in his head.

  “Seein’ ain’t always believin’, Jesse. Remember that.”

  And right now, Jesse didn’t believe his eyes one damned bit.

  LONG HAUL

  Ricky Lee downshifted, the big rig’s air brakes whining as he veered off 77 and onto Rte. 20, feeling like he’d returned home for a family funeral. For a time, Rte. 20 had been a mainstay artery for long-haulers like himself. No more, though. Rte. 20 was a four lane and 77 was a sixer, with long stretches of eight, a higher speed limit and fresh paved blacktop, complete with a brand-spankin’-new HOV lane. State-of-the-art road, she was, no two ways about it.

  Ricky despised her. Hated the sleek, black bitch with a passion.

  Rte. 20, a favorite of Ricky’s, was dying, and it was the slow, prolonged death of a cancer patient, each day that passed nudging it a little closer to its demise. The towns and businesses attached to 20, once vibrant and thriving, had been collateral damage, withering away as the death knell tolled. They’d heard it. Ricky had heard it, too.

  He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the windshield, the streaky glass spattered with bug carcasses and dried insect guts. Rolling under the sodium vapor light at the interchange made the windshield more mirror than glass, affording him a good, long look at himself. Ricky was pleased. The dash display bathed his visage in an eerie, green glow. When he smiled his too-wide smile, his small, rat teeth fluoresced, his eyes sinking deeper into an already sharp-featured face. He looked like something you might see in a movie on the Sci-Fi channel. A creature just this side of human.

  His reflection disappeared before he could study it further. The ramp was narrowing, merging him into the right lane of Rte. 20.

  Ricky didn’t mind. He’d get another chance. It was full-on night now, and the dark hours stretched out ahead of him just like the four lane. Next interchange was an hour, maybe hour and a half away. He’d hit it right around midnight. Witching hour. Hell, that would be something to look forward to.

  He’d always had a spooky face, he knew that. Didn’t spook him none, of course, but it had spooked plenty of others, that was for sure. He had no clue just how many there’d been over the years, but felt comfortable with: a shitload.

  He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, keeping time with a tune he couldn’t quite place. It was the man in black, no question about that. Ricky Lee Mabry would’ve recognized Johnny Cash even if the radio were playing under water. But this song... Ricky didn’t think he’d ever heard it before. He liked it, though. Liked it a lot. He wondered if it was one of the tracks Cash recorded right before he died, as his destination came into view. That must have been something, he mused. Recording songs that might not get heard until after you were gone, working to get them done while the life bled out of you as fast as that train he’d sung about in Folsom Prison Blues.

  I hear that train a comin’, comin’ ‘round the bend...

  Was that what death sounded like when it was on you? When you knew it was close and the Reaper was sharpening his scythe, your name dancing across the blade?

  He nosed the 18 wheeler into the turn lane and bumped over the apron into Von’s Truck Paradise. Once upon a time, perhaps the rusty sheet metal sign had been honest. It sure wasn’t holdin’ up its end of the bargain now, though. Ricky had serious doubts it ever had. Even when Rte. 20 had bubbled with the lifeblood of commerce, Von’s hadn’t been much more than a well-traveled pit stop between better-maintained facilities. That was all right, though. Von’s still delivered what it promised to those who were willing to put-in there. A place to park and rest. Good food and a 24-hour dining room. Breakfast served ‘round the clock. Clean showers. A cot barracks with cable television—if you really wanted to treat yourself for the couple hours you’d be staying. The cot barracks stood off to the side, all but abandoned now. With Rte. 20 circling the drain, most of the whores had moved on, finding different stops to haunt, different drivers to spread their legs for. Ricky wondered whether there might be some company to be found, perhaps in the dining room. He wasn’t averse to spending a little down
time with a lady. Nosiree, he was not.

  Weeds poked through splits and seams in the pitted blacktop. Discarded beer cans rolled this way and that, pushed and pulled by the shifting breeze. Ricky counted eight vehicles in the lot, not including his own. The scene was surreal. The parking field could hold a hundred big rigs and just as many non-commercial vehicles, without any trouble. The six semis and two cars looked like they’d been marooned out here. Like somebody’d dumped them on the moon.

  The Honda Civic, he knew, belonged to Dinah, who ran Von’s now. Von, like so many of the business owners who’d made their lives along Rte. 20, had cashed in. He hadn’t wanted to stick around watching business die off, waiting for the day when the lot remained empty morning ‘til night, the register receipts unable to match expenses. Von had turned the place over to Dinah, getting good and drunk on free whiskey at the Under New Management celebration. That same night, he’d palmed the key to unit six in the cot barracks, put his .38 in his mouth and punched his ticket to the afterlife. Ricky couldn’t say as he blamed him. He’d rented six a couple times since, expecting to hear Von’s ghost haunting the place. But he hadn’t. Just the occasional rat, chewing on the cable TV wire.

  Ricky parked the Peterbilt at the far rear fringe of the lot, a good fifty yards from the nearest rig and twice that from the main building. He glanced down at the satellite radio console as the final chords of the Cash tune faded out. Hurt, that was the title. He’d have to remember that. He’d download it later, when he got connected to the internet. Gals who hitched were into that sort of stuff, songs about anger and loneliness and havin’ nowhere else to go. Songs about hurt. Yep, addin’ that one to his iPod sounded like a plan. The next girl he gave a ride to would probably like it.

  It would have to be the next one, though. This one wouldn’t be singing along with anybody. Not Johnny Cash, not Waylon and Willie, not even Garth Brooks. There wouldn’t be any music, not where she was going.

  Ricky killed the headlights, leaving only the running lights on. He shifted the semi into neutral and engaged the emergency brake. Then, he slid across the seat and hopped out the passenger side, dropping from the cab into near-perfect darkness.

  The dome light was disabled. Ricky had a flexi-neck lamp bright enough to read by that he could plug into the cigarette lighter, but he didn’t need it. He knew the sleeper compartment behind the seat better than bats knew their caves and roosts. He grabbed the dead girl by the shoulders, and dragged her out of the truck.

  Her corpse hit the ground with a soft whupp, her cold flesh reminding Ricky of thawed chicken, ready for the roast pan. In the running lights’ faint glow, she was dull-eyed and pallid, like a three-dimensional paper doll. Ricky wondered what she’d look like sitting behind the wheel, the dashboard’s green light playing across her grey lips and washed-out face. Might just give him a run for his money in the people-spookin’ department, he thought.

  He’d already stripped her down, tossing her shoes and panties out a couple hundred miles back. Her wallet and ID had gone into a crushed Big Gulp cup, which he’d ditched over a railing crossing some river whose name he couldn’t remember. It was a shame having to part with the panties, honest and true. They’d been damp well before she’d pissed herself, that was a fact. He brought his fingers to his nose and inhaled deeply. Yup, praise god, he could still smell ‘em.

  Ricky dropped to a crouch, stared out across the parking lot from behind the big rig’s knobby tires. He saw no movement beyond that of the rolling beer cans and discarded Styrofoam cups. Good. Just as he’d hoped for.

  He eased the passenger door closed, silencing the DOOR AJAR tone. One of these days, he swore, he was going to find out which fuse handled the damn thing and disable that, too. You couldn’t hear it, not unless you were right on top of the rig, but still, better safe than sorry. That was a lesson Pa had taught him, and he’d had ample opportunity to reflect on the wisdom of it, usually after failing to take it to heart. He closed his eyes, blocked out everything else, concentrated hard. Tomorrow, figure out the door chime.

  With the rig idling, cab dark and running lights on, the message was clear. Parked back here, folks would think he had himself a woman and wanted privacy. Or maybe a man. Wasn’t like there weren’t fruities running long haul, and plenty of ‘em wouldn’t want no part of the cot barracks, either. This part of the country wasn’t exactly what you’d call progressive. Seeing a sausage party comin’ or goin’ from the barracks? Well, that wasn’t likely to go over too well.

  Ricky jammed his hands under the dead girl’s armpits, Hank Williams’ drawl seeping from the cab.

  Thibodeaux, Fontaineaux,, the place is buzzin’

  Kinfolk come to see Yvonne by the dozen...

  Not this Yvonne, thought Ricky, the dead woman’s heels dragging across the rutted pavement. Whatever kinfolk this woman had had set their eyes on her for the last time.

  He headed for the slope that fell off at the back of the property, leading down to a creek that had gone dry a long, long time ago. The gully was hip-high with weeds and marsh grass, and hid more than rusted shopping carts and critters most would rather not come across. Weren’t no kinfolk here, true. But Ricky wasn’t leaving the dead girl alone. No, down here she’d have company. Plenty of company.

  Ricky had done some time. Done some burglary. Done some fencing of stolen property. Done worse, though for those particular transgressions, the law hadn’t ever caught up with him. And why would they? Rte. 20 had been left to itself for the most part since 77 opened. That had been damn near six years ago. 77 was where the cruisers cruised and the troopers trooped, or whatever the fuck it was troopers did besides jawbone on the police band or sit around watching for speeders. Who’d ever think to wade down into the garbage strewn, tick-riddled, god-only-knew-what-else was down here drybed, looking for eight missing truck stop whores? Some who’d last been seen eight hundred miles away? Nope. Von’s was a dyin’ spot, rotting away like a cemetery on the edge of a ghost town. It was a place where Ricky could lay his dead without fear of getting—

  He heard the sound before he understood it for what it was. He looked over Yvonne’s shoulder—he’d taken to thinking of her as Yvonne, thanks to Hank—to see if one of her feet had caught in a broken-up patch of blacktop. But no, it wasn’t that. Wasn’t anything like that. He wanted to dismiss it, wanted to pretend he’d imagined it. But Ricky had never been a man keen on lying to himself, so he fought down the panic that threatened to envelop him and wrapped his arm around the dead hooker’s neck.

  Dead? He’d certainly thought so. Been sure of it, in fact, once he’d gotten finished with her in Tennessee. Had even been concerned on account of the stink coming off her by the time they’d reached the state line, when he’d set his sights on Rte. 20, and Von’s. That wasn’t no trucker sweat-stink. No stale farts and greasy fast food wrapper stink. It was a dead-thing stink, and he didn’t want it blowin’ out the window at one of the toll booths, especially if he got one of them talky bitches making his change.

  His mind had a hard time coming to grips with what was happening. It was just like goosing the shifter when you hadn’t quite got the clutch down. Gear-teeth spinning, caught between neutral and whatever you was going for, waiting for something to catch.

  “If you can’t find ‘em, grind ‘em,” he heard Pa say, sixteen again, the old man laughing while Ricky fumbled helplessly in the old Ford pickup, trying to learn how to drive. Trying to figure out what was what.

  Just like now. Yes, she’d been dead. Dead-dead, all the way back in Tennessee. But here she was, struggling to get loose, while he did everything he could to try and crush her windpipe. The night around them was impossibly silent—he couldn’t afford to let her scream.

  But the silence didn’t hold. From behind him came the sound of footsteps. Somebody was coming up the grade, and by the sound of it, they weren’t alone. Had a couple of kids actually snuck off to fool around down there? Hard to believe, what with the smell of ripe garba
ge, and the creepy-crawlies that liked to lay eggs in dead things.

  He slid behind Yvonne and drove a knee into her back, leveraging his hold on her throat. He heard the gristle and sinew giving way beneath his weight, but still, she wouldn’t stop moving. Time—he was running out of time!

  He wrenched Yvonne’s head around savagely, hoping to snap her neck like a chicken’s. He’d drag her back to the truck, maybe get her stuffed back into the sleeper compartment before the kids crested the hill and saw them. Even if they did, so what? A trucker helping a drunk girl into the back of a semi? In the dark? Even if they decided to call someone, it wouldn’t make a difference. Ricky would be long gone. Back onto 77, where he could disappear into the flow of traffic and be a hundred miles away by the time the kids told their story. Maybe, he thought, grinding his teeth and twisting Yvonne like a piece of salt water taffy, they hadn’t been fooling around. Maybe they were smoking a jay. Or doing a little meth. If that was the case, no way in hell they’d be calling the cops. Not over some long-hauler muscling a naked broad into his rig.

  There was resistance, and then finally, the satisfying snap of bone. Sweat pouring down his face, Ricky breathed a sigh of relief. Neck broken, the dead whore wouldn’t give him any more trouble.

  But Ricky hadn’t counted on the fight continuing. Against all odds, it did. Though her head flopped around, loose on her shoulders, she continued to claw at him, digging her ragged fingernails into his flesh. Blood and sweat made his skin slick, compromising the hold he had on her. Before he could get her under control, she found his arm with her mouth and sank her teeth deep into his wrist.