by Z. Rider
He checked the road—dark both ways. Put his foot on the pavement. Hauled himself to standing, one hand on the Cougar’s roof.
The skin behind his ears drew tight. He turned his head, picking out noises: a soft rustle in a tree branch, an owl’s hoot that sent shivers along his neck.
His sneakers sank in the moist dirt by the side of the road as he approached the bus, walking with a hitch to favor his ankle.
Light spilled through an open hatch in the roof. He kept his shoulder against the bus as he picked his way toward it, sweeping his meager flashlight beam along the edge of the field. It was scraggled, and it narrowed a bit, encroached by trees, before widening out for a good bit in the distance. Hard to tell what was on the ground—clumps of weeds, maybe rocks. A bush here and there. Nothing moving but the wind.
He peeked around the edge of the hatch, found himself surprised by the sight of the inside of a bus turned over. Like he hadn’t been expecting that. A table bolted to the floor jutted from what was now the side of the bus, like it was levitating. Bodies lay heaped on the windows below him. The big roadie faced upward, his body bent toward the couch, a broken metal rod standing up from one eye. It looked like the broken leg of a chair, snapped off right at the weld. Gore oozed around the base of the leg, and Carl had to look away, swallowing back acid.
The one with the wild hair looked all right from here, except he wasn’t moving.
A leg—still attached to a body he was pretty sure—hung over the edge of the door to the back of the bus. Carl didn’t think it was Dean.
He took a deep breath of night air before putting a foot through, his flashlight pointing toward the sky as he held onto the bus’s roof. He put his other foot on the edge of the hatch and lowered himself until he was ready to slide that foot out, shimmy himself inside.
Something gave under one of his heels. He shifted it over, working his toes underneath. Knowing—knowing—it was the roadie’s arm, and not wanting to look and verify in case he caught sight of that eye again.
He wriggled his upper body through and stumbled as he stood up, reaching for the floating table to brace himself.
The wild-haired guy hadn’t moved. Carl crouched, touched his neck. Felt nothing. He pulled himself back up.
The pantry had spilled out, as if the salt and pepper and plastic cups and bags of chips had jumped out of the cabinets in surprise. The bathroom door dangled open from above. Carl grabbed hold of it as he made his way through the galley.
He ducked to climb through the sideways bunk door, trying to avoid the roadie hanging from it, nudging a leg lightly aside when he had to.
The roadie’s upper body rested in a bunk, the curtain leaning against his back, hiding the look on his face. Carl was okay with that.
He crawled along the braces between the bunks. The back lounge’s door was caved in. Two people lay intertwined against the windows at the bottom of the bus. The blinds from above hung down crooked. He flashed his light on the window over his head. They’d gotten it half open before they’d been killed.
Carl remembered the easy smile one had had as he’d walked backward off the bus just earlier that day—his hands flying through the air as he’d talked. Now he lay underneath the body of their manager, a trickle of blood from his ear, and Carl did his best not to step on either of them.
No Dean, though. Had they come to snatch Dean instead of kill him?
He grasped the edges of the window above and dug his tennis shoes against the couch to lift himself up to fresh air. It was hard to breathe in the bus, like he might catch what the others had if he pulled in too much of the air down there. With his face pressed to the opening, he gulped the night like it was water. Then he dropped down.
Moving back the other way, he made himself go all the way to the driver’s seat.
The driver’s skull was crushed, the window under his head cracked.
No Dean.
This would be it then—the end of the story. The vampires came and killed everyone, and Dean Thibodeaux had disappeared with them.
And the elf guy. He didn’t see him either. He flashed the light over the wreckage one more time, wincing at what it crossed. He dropped his head, eyes closed, and moved his lips in a silent prayer.
Then he crawled back onto the dirt, the night air fresh and welcome against his skin—even the dark was welcome after what he’d seen inside.
He stayed on his knees, crawling until he’d put a good ten feet between him and it. Then he dropped on his ass.
Man—a cigarette. He really fucking needed a cigarette.
Thinking he’d flag someone down if they passed, he looked up the road—a clear view from where he sat. That’s how he saw the body humped on the ground in the bus’s headlights.
He pushed up and limped over. Another roadie, face down on the pavement. The bus’s headlights lit up the dark blood seeping into the asphalt.
Carl walked back, his eyes on the ground. On the flattened weeds. On the dirt he’d torn up, he guessed, on his way out of the hatch.
The torn-up divots reached out farther than his just toeing his way out.
He stopped and backed up, toward the bus.
Grooves had been scratched into the ground.
Crouching, he put his fingers in them.
Looking toward the field, he made out mashed down weeds, a jagged path breaking through taller scrub.
He shined his weak flashlight toward them, getting to his feet.
Walking slowly.
Following the broken shrubs, losing the trail, finding it again. The flashlight was almost worse than no light at all, giving him just enough illumination to make every shadow look like it was about to jump at him.
At first he thought he was coming up on a rag, a bunched up piece of cloth.
His toe bumped something solid. He swept the light downward, and realized the rag he thought he’d seen was a denim jacket, rucked halfway up a back.
Face down, neck at an angle that made a shudder run through Carl’s shoulders, one of the two missing bodies lay unmoving in the weeds.
He recognized the way a pale ear stuck out in a fork in what he’d at first thought was some kind of strange grass.
He crouched, touching a slice of white skin showing beneath the hair, just above the jacket collar. Still warm. Still malleable. With the angle of the neck, he didn’t expect much, and when he pushed his fingers around the side of it, feeling for a sign of life, he wasn’t surprised when he found nothing.
He swept the beam away, covering all directions, circling outward from it.
Maybe this was the last of them. Maybe they’d gotten Dean. He stared across the swaying reeds, all the way to the dark tangle of trees a hundred yards off. If Dean had gotten to those trees, he could be anywhere. Running his ass off. Getting the fuck out.
Carl didn’t blame him one bit.
He swiped an arm across his brow. Clicked the light off. Squeezed his eyes shut behind his arm.
This was better, wasn’t it? Not finding Dean, instead of finding him dead.
The edge of a sob spilled out of him, mostly air. Half a laugh—at himself. He’d been betrayed by one killer, so what had he done? Come looking for another. Come looking for a different killer to fill the fucking hole inside of him with.
He sniffled, dropping his arm, lifting his face to the breeze. Rain was definitely on the way.
He walked away from the body, his ankle still pinging, weeds pulling at the legs of his jeans. He wasn’t heading straight back to the bus. He didn’t know where he was heading—in circles probably.
Fuck.
He swiped his brow again.
Fuck.
A spray of pale mushrooms peeked from under a clump of grass. He turned the flashlight beam on and dropped toward them.
He stopped.
Took a step closer and crouched.
Moved the grass away with the side of his hand.
Pale fingers, not mushrooms. The palm of a hand. A slim wrist disappear
ing into a denim cuff.
Breathing quickly, he dropped to a knee, crawling forward, sweeping the rest of the clump of long grass out of his way.
What he saw made his breath suck in.
He jerked his head up to check the field, the road. The roar of the bikes was long gone. No other cars were coming. It was just him, him and the bodies.
He played the light over Dean’s face. He could only stand it for a few seconds, his chest feeling like it was breaking. He stared inside at the shoulder of Dean’s shirt. If he hadn’t eliminated everyone else on the bus already, he’d never have fucking known this was Dean.
He crept his gaze back up the side of Dean’s cheek, to those staring eyes, the night reflected in their shine. Eyes bigger than any he’d ever seen, and he gagged a little as he realized what was so fucked up about them.
No eyelids.
Shadows flickered over the body—reeds of grass fluttering in the wind.
Flesh had been chewed from his face, his neck, his stomach. They’d ripped right through his jeans and taken chunks out of his legs. The only thing they hadn’t touched was his chest.
Carl put a hand on it.
It didn’t rise or fall under his touch.
Half his neck was gone. Half his cheek. His tee shirt was dark and wet where blood had soaked through.
And those eyes, staring upward, never blinking.
This hadn’t been about killing him quickly.
This was revenge.
They’d left him here to watch the fucking sun come up.
He played the light along one splayed arm, bone showing through ripped flesh, the skin on his untouched wrist a milky blue in the moonlight. He stopped at the fingers that could have been mushrooms.
He was about to move the light away when one twitched, so slightly it could have almost been a breeze shifting it.
He leaned over Dean, looking into those startled eyes. His stomach churned, slick and hot and slow.
“Are you in there?” he whispered.
A flicker crossed the shine of Dean’s eye—it could have been a cloud moving past the moon, it could have been a pulse-beat in Carl’s eye.
He leaned closer, his skin prickling. “Dean?”
God, he reeked of blood, the stench earthy, sharp, and strong. He had to bite back his bile.
Another flicker. Weak.
Cool night air curled under the collar of Carl’s jacket, buffeting his hot neck.
A coyote howled in the distance.
And Dean. The slightest movement in his hand. So slight, again, he could have imagined it, but he hoped he hadn’t. He wanted to believe in it, the shift of a muscle, there and gone. But there.
They’d left him for the fucking sun to finish him off.
He looked back to his car. A hundred feet.
They’d counted on rescue crews coming, eventually. They’d counted on no one knowing they had to get Dean the fuck out before the sun crested the horizon.
They’d counted on the rescue crews being too fucking busy with the bus to go looking for strays until it was too late.
“All right.” His voice was quiet as the night. “Let’s do this.” He gripped underneath Dean’s arms, Dean’s head lolling between his sneakers. He had to squeeze his eyes shut, hard, for a moment, get his belly back under control.
He lifted and dragged.
Under his jacket, his armpits started to slick with sweat. His shirt clung to his back. He focused on the tree line, far off and getting farther with every step. He couldn’t fucking look at Dean, the white of his shinbone showing through the gore.
He stopped halfway to catch his breath, straighten his back.
From there, even in the dark, he could see the twisted hump of the other body they’d passed.
Lift and drag. The heels of Dean’s boots flattened scrub, digging twin trails in the dirt. Lift and drag.
When he got to the car, he laid Dean down in the dirt at the shoulder and dropped against the Cougar’s flank, wiping his forehead. Thirsting for water. Wanting a cigarette.
Really wanting a cigarette.
Just a little ways more.
The trunk lid popped with a tired clunk. He levered it up, holding it open as he peered in its shadows. A physics textbook, its pages bent. An oil funnel. The gas can he’d bought last week. He dropped it all on the ground. Pulling a scratchy blanket out last, he let it fall beside the heap.
Bending his knees with Dean’s body between them, he grunted and lifted with his legs. Dean’s arm swung lifelessly, the denim jacket sleeve dark with blood. The smell of blood pushed into Carl’s nostrils. He felt like he was never going to smell anything else again.
He heaved Dean back-first into the trunk. Got under his hips to lift them. Folded his legs in.
Straightened and listened for cars. He didn’t want to have to explain why he was putting a body in his trunk. He lowered the lid, not hard enough to latch it, just letting it rest there, closed.
He walked the long way back to the other body in the field.
When he lifted it under the armpits, the neck lolling in a way that was all wrong, a pack of cigarettes dropped from the musician’s jacket.
Carl laid him back down, got a cigarette out, and lit it. He stuffed the rest of the pack in his pocket and grabbed hold of the body again. Dragging, inhaling, dragging, exhaling. Stopping to enjoy the final puff before crushing it underfoot and grabbing the body by the armpits again.
When the heel of his shoe bumped his back tire, he let the body drop. He opened his trunk with two fingers. With a grunt, he hauled the other body over the lip, letting it roll onto the mess of Dean’s body.
Dean hadn’t moved.
There was every possibility Dean was really dead.
He had no explanation for why he was trying to rescue a vampire, like it was some stray dog that’d been hit by a car. He tossed the blanket in with the two of them, bundling it near a taillight, and lowered the lid again, lightly, before walking around the side of the car.
He popped the glove compartment and yanked out his car registration, the car’s manual and maintenance schedule, a couple of folded road maps, tossing them onto the passenger seat. Underneath all that, he found a screwdriver.
Back at the trunk, he raised the lid. Dragged and shoved the top body until it was positioned how he wanted it—where it, and gravity, would be the most use.
He ducked his head, wiping his brow on the inside of his arm. Are you really doing this?
Who’s it going to hurt? He’s already dead.
Yeah, but—Christ, are you really doing this?
He put a hand on the musician’s skull, which, unlike Dean’s, still had a trace of warmth in it.
Placing the end of the screwdriver against the guy’s neck, he closed his eyes. Bit his lip. Dug the end of the screwdriver against skin. It dented. The metal tip slid. He gritted his teeth, grabbed the skull harder, and dug in again.
He made the hole, and at first nothing came out of it.
He turned his head, wiping his face on his sleeve again, then put his mind elsewhere while he ground the tip of the screwdriver into the hole, jamming hard on it.
It took a couple tries before he got any worthwhile bleeding going.
As the thin stream trickled down the dead guy’s collarbone, he shoved the body until the wound was over Dean’s mouth. Crouching, holding the body, he looked between them.
Dean’s lip glistened but didn’t so much as twitch.
He shoved the lid shut and hoped for the best.
The worst case scenario was he’d be finding a place to dump two bodies later.
He took one last look at his stuff piled on the side of the road.
He didn’t need any of it. Every gas station had gas cans and oil funnels, and if he never sat through a fucking physics class again—his name was written in it. Wind buffeted him as he grabbed it from the side of the road.
He realized he was never going to sit through a physics class again. Whatever wa
y this all went, he was a shadow. No home, no family. No interest in living life above ground with the rest of the world. Not now. Not after all he’d been through.
How could he ever possibly fucking connect with another human being?
He limped through the dirt. Opened his door. Dropped behind the wheel.
He fished the cigarette pack out of his pocket and pulled one out.
As he raised the car’s cigarette lighter to it, the car jostled.
He inhaled a lungful of smoke, leaning his head back.
The back end bounced a little.
A thump came, like someone shifting in a confined space.
His gut squirmed. His cheeks felt cold. Maybe trapping a vampire in your trunk wasn’t the smartest move. He rubbed his temple, elbow leaning against the window.
Another light thump came from the back of the car.
It wasn’t the sound of someone trying to get out.
He could only imagine what actually was going on back there—and he dragged long and hard on the cigarette, sucking the thought from his mind.
He started the Cougar’s engine.
As he pulled onto the road, the cigarette pack slid across the dash. The St. Michael medal swayed. A fat drop of rain hit the windshield.
The bus’s roof played at the edge of his vision, and then it was gone. He pushed the pedal down.
7.
* * *
The sun glared orange in Carl’s eyes as the door to a small-town hardware store swung closed behind him. The Cougar sat parked at the curb. The trunk had been silent for hours. He didn’t know if that was good or bad news. He unlocked his door and slid his purchase between the seats. It dropped with a thunk on the rear floorboards.
He got in and drove, still a good hour from twilight.
He stuck to the back roads, not entirely sure what he was looking for but hoping he’d know when he found it.
He took a pull off a warm can of Pepsi he’d bought when he’d stopped for gas.
The sun dipped lower behind him. Shadows stretched across the county highway. The woods on either side were lush still, only a few leaves changing color yet. The road wound upward for a while before dipping back down.
