Clutch in. He restarted the engine, foot light on the gas pedal. Clutch out, slowly this time. First gear... clutch in... second gear... clutch out, slowly...
The boy knew the car inside and out. It was his creation. He had built it from a battered hulk Doctor Frankenstein had hauled home from a nearby junkyard. Chevy body, but parts from a couple dozen other vehicles as well. Chrome straight axle, steel-crank 375-horse 327, body as black and glossy as a Mamba's scales, aluminum dash so clean you could eat off of it. Building the car had been the doctor's idea of therapy, but it was his creation's vision of freedom.
But the being Frankenstein had constructed from pieces of teenaged athletes who had perished in a school bus accident did not know how to drive the cherry vehicle he had created. Oh, he knew in principle, well enough. But he had never had the opportunity to test those principles.
Until now.
Clutch in... third gear... clutch out... slowly, slowly.
Foot on the gas. Picking up real speed now. The road a taut whipcord bathed in headlight glow. The house of Frankenstein gone now, buried beneath the black shroud of a summer night. A vault of unkept promises abandoned in the darkness. If Frankenstein would have kept those promises, things might have ended differently. But the doctor was a liar, always talking of freedom, but never letting that magnificent word stand on its own. Chaining it to other words—patience, and perfection, words that stung his creation as surely as the inevitable, prying bite of the doctor's scalpel.
No one would cut on him ever again. The boy was certain of that. By now Frankenstein was dead, erased from the earth by the creature which dwelled in the dark waters beneath his house of pain. It was over.
And it was beginning. The boy longed to roll down the window, feel the summer wind on his face, hold a piece of the summer night in his lungs. He wanted to turn on the radio, search out something good. Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues." Gene Vincent's "Race With the Devil."
Time for all that later. Now he had to concentrate.
Clutch in. Fourth gear. Clutch out.
Good. Very good.
He kept his mismatched hands on the wheel, the bulldog tattooed between thumb and index finger on his right hand spreading its jaws as if ready to lock on black plastic. His eyes—one green and one blue—held the road. The speedometer needle speared sixty, then seventy.
A sign blurred by on the right. One mile to the main highway.
The boy smiled.
He rolled down the window.
He flipped on the radio.
Stared out at the straight and true whipcord road to freedom.
Saw the dog, trapped there in the unforgiving glow of his headlights, staring back.
The gator's jaws snapped closed, and twin canyons of pain trenched Frankenstein's left calf. The reptile pulled at him, slowly, an unconscious imitation of the deliberate manner in which Frankenstein's creation had dragged him through the basement laboratory, as if giving the good doctor time to realize just what was happening to him.
Frankenstein reached out, grabbing for the bottom stair. The massive reptile whipped its head to the side. Tendon and cartilage tore, and something crumpled in the doctor's knee. Tibia and fibula splintered simultaneously.
Frankenstein's hand snapped closed, but the stair was out of reach, and he was rewarded with nothing more than a handful of water. Only water, nothing more —
No. There was something in his hand. A metal shaft.
In a flash, he remembered tumbling down the staircase. Recalled the sound of something clattering down the stairs behind him.
The fireplace poker.
Frankenstein lashed backward, striking out as hard as he could.
He hit nothing but air.
The gator was gone.
So was the better part of the doctor's left leg.
Fat tires dug in as the boy hit the brakes.
The left front exploded in a shower of rubber. The car spun, and the boy could only sit there, mismatched hands knotted around the wheel, tattooed dog's jaws mangling a circular black bone, foot heavy on the brake. Link Wray's "Rumble" spilling staticky through the radio speaker, pounding in his ears. The Chevy completed one rotation. Started another, then drifted off the whipcord blacktop, kicking up hard fistfuls of dirt, scything a wide swatch through tangled skeletons of overgrown brush, tires grinding empty beer cans and decayed roadkill... glossy black body heaving through a chain-link fence, powering forward and up.
Then down. Both headlights exploded as the front bumper compacted the grille. The boy thought that he was going to die. Smash against something waiting in the blackness beyond the fence, smash it so hard that he would come apart at the seams and crumble into a hundred pieces. But the car only drifted to a stop and died, and the boy found himself staring through a cracked windshield snared by a net of chain link.
Link Wray's guitar drifted away, ice melting in the warm night. The boy turned off the radio. He tried to open the door, but it was wrapped tight by the same length of fence that blanketed the windshield. He kicked at the door until it gave, providing just enough room for him to slip out.
Heavy black boots skittered over gravel. He couldn't quite pick up his feet. Knees weak, legs shaky, he stumbled forward, limping worse than usual. He couldn't see much in the darkness, but he could hear just fine.
The dog he'd nearly pancaked growled at him, and he stopped dead in his tracks.
Frankenstein dropped the fireplace poker and unbuckled his belt, urgently dragging it free from his trousers.
Blood gushed from the doctor's left leg. A mauled, bloody stump ending just below the kneecap, which was now a slick hunk of useless bone suspended by a thread of ragged flesh.
The doctor had seen much while building his creation, but nothing could have prepared him for this. Because this was his leg, his knee, and he was thankful for the darkness, glad that only a slim tendon of light connected the alligator pit to the doorway above, for if he could see his ruined knee clearly, if he could see his severed leg in the grip of the gator's jaws...
No. He wouldn't think of such things. Not now. He threaded the belt through its buckle, lassoed his leg several inches above the wound. Tightened the loop, then threaded the end of the belt under and around the buckle—once, twice, three times—tying it off as best he could.
Just like tying off a sausage, he told himself. One of those nice plump bratwursts Mama used to make... If he had only listened to her. If he had never come to this accursed America... this land of greasy cheeseburgers, rock 'n' roll, and platinum blondes....
Gott in Himmel. This is a fine time for regrets. He shook away his thoughts, concentrating on nothing more than the present moment. There was still no sound from the gator, but the doctor knew that it was back there... waiting in the black shadows, the blacker water. Frankenstein snatched up the poker and eased backward, toward the staircase, eyes on the darkness. He didn't want to turn away from it, but he had to, and soon he had dragged himself onto the first step, pushing off on the slick, slime-coated floor of the pit with his remaining foot. He tucked the poker under one arm and turned, pulling with both hands now, but it seemed he weighed a thousand pounds. He prayed for an adrenaline rush of epic proportions, prayed to keep shock at bay, and he pulled for all he was worth. His body slick with sweat, his nerves tingling with desperation, he rose to the second step just as the water parted and the black wave broke behind him.
Reflexively, the doctor kicked back at the unseen attacker.
The gator's jaws slapped closed audibly, missing the doctor's right foot by inches. Desperately, he pulled himself up—his biceps burning, the muscles in his shoulders knotted with fear—and in an instant he was on the third step.
For just an instant.
Plywood creaked. Nails groaned.
The third step gave way.
The growling dog approached Frankenstein's creation, and the young man lurched backward. His hands were at his sides, muscles tensed, big fingers curled like the cla
ws of a wild beast, a —
Monster. Suddenly, he remembered the boy whose face he now wore, recalled for the millionth time the cool blue terror freezing his victim's eyes as the hands of a monster closed around his neck and snapped it like a twig.
That wasn't me, he told himself. I'm not that way anymore.
The dog's bark slapped him through the silence. The young man had nearly run down the animal, and now it seemed intent on returning the favor.
The beast was certainly well-equipped for such a task. Its jaws were blunt and square, lined with yellow-white spikes that seemed to glow in the moonlight. Its head resembled nothing so much as a cartoon bear trap—a huge machine of a head on a body of compact muscle, balanced on legs that were extremely thick and extremely short. Frankenstein's creation knew that this dog had been bred for destruction, just as he had been bred for—
For what? His mismatched hands shook before him, ready to tear the beast to pieces. He could almost hear the tattooed dog on his right hand growling in anticipation.
"No," he said, and his hands dropped to his sides, and his fingers seemed to lengthen in the moonlight.
The dog's black ears perked.
Its nose wriggled.
It whined.
And then the dog moved forward, nudging the young man's right hand, sniffing it.
The beast's jaws widened. A curtain of black lips rose over twin rows of sharp teeth.
A pink tongue darted between the beast's teeth, licking the tattooed dog on the back of the young man's hand. He bent low, patted the animal's head. "It's okay, boy. We both had a scare, but we're okay."
The dog cocked its massive head to one side, as if considering the boy's words. Once again, it whined.
The boy looked around. His car was in bad shape, but it wasn't the only one. There were dozens of cars here, rusting hulks. Bent and twisted, some completely crushed. All silent and dead beneath the light of the August moon.
He turned and started toward the road. The dog followed, keeping to his right side, its nose not far from his tattooed hand. And then something smashed against the young man's skull, and he went down hard.
When he opened his eyes, a hard circle of light seemed to pin him to the ground. He blinked and found that he could see around the light, see the man standing there behind it, the dog at his side.
The man aimed the light at the face Frankenstein's creation had stolen from another, and then he redirected the beam, haloing the creature's right hand so that the tattooed dog seemed to glow like a tangle of electric blue veins on dead white skin.
"It ain't possible," the man said. "It just ain't."
The creature squinted up at the man—the harsh electric light in his grip, the cool circle of moon behind him. He saw nothing more than silhouette, but that was enough.
For Frankenstein's creation had a perfectly serviceable brain in his cranium, and he was using it.
Clearly, he could see that the man standing above him had only one arm.
The doctor tried to hold on, but he couldn't. He slipped sideways, dropping ass-first through the opening between the second and fourth stairs. The drop was only about a foot and a half, but he came down hard, on his tailbone, his body wedged between the stairs, his ass once more immersed in cold, black water.
He twisted to one side, his eye searching for the gator. It waited on the other side of the stairway, watching him.
An instant later, its reptile brain had made a decision. The gator darted forward, jaws snapping closed, and the first step splintered between its teeth. Frankenstein wriggled madly, his ass sliding easily on slime-slick concrete. His stump scraped against the brick wall, but the makeshift tourniquet held firm. Frankenstein managed to get what was left of his wounded leg into the gap between the stairs, and then his right leg followed suit, his face scraping the side of the fourth step as he dropped to the floor of the alligator pit.
A good half-dozen splinters speared his cheek. That was fine—not much of a price to pay for the barrier that protected him from the gator.
Right. Some protection. A veritable wall of Jericho. One termite-eaten plywood step, guaranteed to come tumbling down at the first snap of the reptile's slavering jaws. The doctor held his breath and stared, watching the step and the gator beyond, waiting... waiting...
The damn thing refused to move.
Frankenstein swallowed hard. Bait. That was what he needed. Something to spark that pea-brain into action. Gingerly, he reached out, and his left hand came to rest on the second step.
The gator charged forward, jaws snapping, but the doctor had already removed his hand from the step. But he did not shrink from the great beast. His right hand lashed out, between the stairs, and he drove the fireplace poker into the reptile's right eye.
Bone cracked in the hollow of the beast's eye socket. The creature exploded from the floor as if electrocuted, flopping wildly on its back, pus-yellow belly exposed now, bullet-head thrashing in the black water until the poker clattered loose.
But by the time that sound echoed through the pit, Frankenstein had pulled himself between the second and fourth steps, onto the fifth, the sixth, dragging his bloody stump behind him, ascending from the alligator pit with a singular determination not seen since Sir Edmund Hillary had conquered Everest.
The doctor squinted at the open doorway above as he pulled himself onto the seventh step. Soft white light bathed his anguished features, and he managed a slight smile.
Once more, the stairway creaked. Groaned.
Frankenstein closed his eyes, praying that the seventh stair would bear his weight.
Bear his weight it did, but that fact brought him little solace.
A timber cracked below.
The entire stairway swayed.
The one-armed man's name was Roy, and it wasn't until Roy shared that sliver of information that Frankenstein's creation realized that he had no name at all.
But he knew that he had many other things. The legs of a star running back... the torso of a center... a wide receiver's lungs... a right arm which had belonged to Roy in the days when Roy was an All-State quarterback.
The young man had told Roy the entire story from beginning to end, and it was obvious that Roy believed every word of it. Now he trailed behind Roy, limping worse than usual, following the one-armed man through the junkyard. Roy's dog kept to the boy's right, near the hand that had once belonged to his master. That made the young man feel especially guilty, even though Roy didn't seem to notice.
The young man said, "I thought you were dead. All of you. That's what the doctor told me."
"Maybe the doc was right." Roy didn't look back as he spoke. "Hell, maybe we all died that night. But maybe some of us just died a little more than others. Maybe they were the lucky ones."
Roy cut a path between a twisted Cadillac convertible and a rusted-out Hudson. The flashlight beam played over a squared-off metal box—yellow as cheddar, but alive with dead-white splotches that resembled mold. The beam settled into a straight line, tracing a row of hard black letters that ran beneath a dozen broken windows. BELTON SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL. HOME OF THE BULLDOGS.
Roy pointed at the stenciled words. "That explains the tattoo, at least."
The young man rubbed the bulldog tattoo on his right hand. "It explains a lot," he said. He reached out and touched the school bus, gently, as if he expected an electric shock.
Roy laughed. "Nothing to be afraid of. It ain't gonna bite or anything."
The young man turned towards him. "I'm sorry," he said. "I wish there was something that I could do. I wish — "
"Don't worry about it," Roy said. "It's not like it's your fault or anything." He set the flashlight on the hood of the bus, reached out with his left hand and squeezed the young man's right arm.
"Hell, at least you're taking good care of it for me. You must work out."
"Weights," the young man said. His hands were floating in the air before him, searching for an explanation. The second-string quarterb
ack's left hand, Roy's right. "Bench press, mostly. I can press four hundred, even do reps with it. Curls are my favorite though. I have a preacher's bench, and— "
Roy's bitter laughter prickled over the young man's spine.
"You have to understand," the young man said. "I had no choice. It's not my fault... Well, that's a lie. My face. I'm responsible for that. Even then, the doctor maneuvered me into it. He made me ugly so I wouldn't disobey him. You see, he wanted me to kill that boy. He wanted me to steal his face. Frankenstein needed to own me with his silence."
"So how'd you get away?"
"It was simple," the young man said, his voice even, honest. "I hit the doctor over the head, and then I fed him to the alligator."
"Oh, Jesus." Roy laughed until tears spilled from his eyes. "Oh, Christ, that's a good one." He went on laughing, shaking like he was going to break.
Roy's laughter made the young man nervous. He hadn't said anything funny. More than anything, he wanted Roy to understand. "It's not a joke," he said. "I had no choice."
Roy's laughter evaporated. "I didn't have a hell of a lot of choice, either," he said. "That's the real joke. I mean, after the wreck I was alive and all, but without my arm... My arm was my ticket out of here. And now you've got it. As for your face, I never liked its previous owner much anyway. That's no skin off my butt. Tough world, and all that happy crap. Both for him and for me. But I don't hold a grudge. You only get what you can take—that's my motto, amigo."
"You can't mean that."
Roy laughed. "Hell if I can't. The world doesn't give you much, and what it gives you you have to work at keeping."
"You make it sound brutal."
"Brutal? You got that right. Look around, buddy. Is this how you'd like to end up? I mean, I don't have a whole bunch of prospects. Me, the guy who was going to break the family mold, get the hell out of this town. Football star. College bound. All that stuff. And here I am, stuck, just like my brothers."
Bad Intentions Page 8
