“I guess I’m from here,” she said. “Now, anyway. But I wasn’t here until yesterday afternoon.”
He perked up. “Where were you?”
“Camping.”
“Like, in a tent? Out in the woods?”
“Yes. In a tent. Out in the woods.”
He whistled and shook his head. “Wow,” he said.
“I know.”
“I mean, wow. You have no idea how lucky you are. Seriously, you can’t be outside at night. At all. I can’t believe you’re standing here talking to me. You should be under a house somewhere.”
She thought about all the nights she and Amber had sat outside the tent, hugging their knees and watching the fire. Out in the open.
“Where’s your family?” she asked.
Justin deflated. He sighed and shook his head. “Ain’t got one.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s not…doesn’t have anything to do with all this mess. I was on my own even before this. My dad died of cancer last year. My mom is…was…”
Justin trailed off and looked up the street. Heather got the sense that he was looking at something far, far away.
“…wherever,” he finished. “She had issues. Had a couple kids other than me, but the state took them away. My dad raised me.” He shrugged and looked back at her. He had pleasant green eyes. “Far as I’m concerned, she’s been dead even longer than him. So I got nobody. Which is kind of nice, right, because it means I didn’t lose anybody. Know what I’m saying?”
“I do,” she said. She studied his face, cocking her head to one side, returning his expectant stare. When he said nothing else, she asked, “Justin, can you tell me what happened here?”
“Sure,” he said. “But can you help me with something first?”
“What?”
“Help me cut these bodies down and get a tarp over them. They bug me.”
11.
Back when Justin cared about such things, Kayleigh had found a way to screw him with her pants up, clothes on and him no where near her couch or bedroom. She engineered this after he left her trailer—ran from her trailer—when the conversation went south. On his end, the situation degenerated rapidly when she said:
I’M PREGNANT.
On her end, it happened when in response to that, Justin said:
BULL-SHIT!
And then followed up with every girl’s favorite:
IT AIN’T MINE!
Oooh. Not good, not the way to handle that, no sir. Even if it was true; even if she couldn’t be pregnant by him because he’d always used condoms on the expectation that this day would come—this day when she would utilize the nuclear option in her attempts to keep him from ever leaving her. He’d seen it coming. And so he bagged it. Always. And none had ever broken—a blue-eyed miracle, considering his size. Not that he knew much about other dicks or anything, but Kayleigh had commented on it. And she knew a lot about dicks.
“I can’t believe you said that shit to me,” she said, eyes narrowing. Speaking of blue-eyed miracles, Kayleigh had gotten her hands on some of those funky contacts and now she was a blue-eyed miracle, kind of a wild effect in concert with her reddish hair. Looking down at her that evening, he’d felt like he was banging one of those spice junkies from Dune.
“What am I supposed to say? It’s true.”
“Them things ain’t a hundred percent effective. Even says so on the box.”
“They are if you put them on your wang before you start fucking. So if you are pregnant, one more time: it ain’t mine. I don’t know what you want me to say. And, I mean, if you were wanting me to be all like, oh shit, oh fuck, I guess we have to get back together, I’m not going to say that. That is one hell of a bad idea, and you know it just as well as I do.”
Red lightning flashed behind her contacts. Her jaw hardened and her features seemed to lose all their softness. Justin saw the funnel cloud gathering strength. He knew the look; he’d made her angry. The list of things that made Kayleigh angry ran longer than her dad’s rap sheet, but she really didn’t like it, never had, when Justin stood up. When he failed to abide the ride and go with the flow, no matter how twisted, illogical and downright disastrous that flow might be.
“Why’d you come over here? Huh? Why did you come over when I texted you? You come over just to get laid? Were you like, I’m gonna go over there and fuck Kayleigh one more time and then I’m gonna dog her ass and leave? You sorry-ass motherfucker!”
Couldn’t argue with her there. When he’d looked down at his phone a half hour before, his eyes had translated her text into a picture of a t-shirt that fell right there where her hips swelled and her ass began—an ass clad in either no underwear at all or that black thong. The t-shirt in his mind was one she’d had since middle school, and since she was twenty-one now, she’d outgrown it in the best of good ways. Everything up top strained to get out. Deserved to get out. Talent like that demanded recognition.
Apparently, Kayleigh had called him over not for a little weeknight ex sex, but to rope him back into a cruddy relationship so that they could scream at each other all the time. Again.
She attacked.
“You sorry-ass-cock-sucking-mother-fucking-dick-licking-ASSHOLE!”
The names, the profanity, the disrespect fell like the blows she rained down on him from all directions. She whacked him so fast that he thought for a moment she had grown extra arms. So he ran, skedaddling out the front door, across the deck and down to his truck. Kayleigh screaming, yelling, shrieking at him the whole time.
“Oh, I’m SO going to fix your sorry ass! You’re going to regret this shit, motherfucker!”
He should have stopped. That was where he messed up; he never should have left her like that, screaming and yelling out there in front of her trailer, mad enough to do about anything. Say about anything to anybody. He should have stopped, calmed her down. He couldn’t have ever left her happy—he’d been serious about not getting back together—but a sad Kayleigh was better for his health than a mad Kayleigh. Maybe if he’d done that, things would have gone differently.
Maybe then she wouldn’t have called the police and claimed he’d hit her.
The in-processing office at the Morgan County Law Enforcement Center looked so much like his old guidance counselor’s office that the blast from the past nearly gave him whiplash. The same asbestos tile slapped the bottoms of his slippered feet, and when he sat down he found himself staring at the same off-white cinderblock wall. The only difference was that instead of goofy inspirational posters of inspirational mountain ranges and inspirational phrases (Unleash Your Dreams, Don’t Kill Yourself On School Property, Even White Trash Like You Have A Purpose), this wall wore a whole lot of nothing. Not even a cheesy calendar from the local funeral home.
In another parallel, Justin did his in-processing with Deputy Petey Starnes, who’d sat behind him in third-period European History senior year. In class, Petey had read hunting magazines packed with birds, bears, deer and different ways to kill all of the above. One time, Petey tapped Justin on the back and said check out this motherfucker, and when Justin turned around he found himself looking at a centerfold, an honest-to-God centerfold like in Playboy, of a twelve-point buck.
Now, a year later, Petey wiped his nose and pushed a telephone across the scuffed wooden desk at Justin.
“Go on, man. At least give it a try.”
“She ain’t gonna come get me,” Justin mumbled.
“She’s your mama.”
“She’s a bitch.”
“Maybe so, but if she can go your bond tomorrow, who gives a shit? Let her know you’re here, and as soon as we can get you in front of a district court judge, your ass is out.”
“I don’t need anybody to go my bond. My dad left me a little something; I can get the cash.”
“Yeah, but you’re going to be in leg chains tomorrow. How’re you going to get to a bank?
Justin looked at the phone and sighed. Thank God the rule abo
ut a single phone call turned out to be fiction; he had made about ten calls already, trying to find somebody to come bridge him with the bondsman tomorrow so he didn’t have to rot in here until his next court date. The response was predictable and uniform: I feel you, dog, but I’m a little, uh, short this month, why don’t you call (fill in name of some other broke “friend.”) Folks couldn’t even spare it long enough for him to process out of here and get to a bank, pay them back.
Because he was alone. Because with his father dead, he didn’t have anybody. Nothing but a bunch of “friends” who wouldn’t loan him enough to pay a bondsman for even an hour or two because at the heart of it, they didn’t really trust him. They worried that he’d come up with a reason he couldn’t pay them back on time, because that was what they did every time they owed somebody money.
“Go on,” Petey repeated. “I’m telling you, man, you do not want to stay. We can keep you in holding overnight, but if you’re not out come morning, they’re gonna stick you in a bunkroom. There’s guys sleeping on the floor in there.”
“And somebody’s going to try to fuck me in the ass as soon as the door closes, right?”
Petey shrugged.
“Never know,” he said.
Justin sighed and took the phone. He dialed his mother’s number. It rang. It rang again. On the third ring, her carrier’s robo-answer picked up.
“The Cricket Wireless customer you are trying to reach is not accepting calls at this time. Please try again later.”
“Shit,” he muttered, hanging up.
“Voicemail?”
“Sounds like she ran out of minutes on her phone again.”
“That sucks, man.” Petey took the phone and shook his head. “Listen, I go off shift at seven in the morning. You tell me where you think she’s at, I’ll ride by there and tell her what’s going on.”
Justin closed his eyes. Damn. Damn, damn, damn.
“I didn’t hit Kayleigh,” he said. “She’s lying.”
“Shit, I would have. That girl was always gonna get her ass beat some day.”
“Maybe, but I didn’t do it. I pissed her off and this is how she’s getting back at me. I shouldn’t be here, man. I got to get to class in the morning!”
“I know,” Petey said, rising from his chair. “But look, maybe your mama will come through. And if not, maybe the judge’ll let you out on a written promise to appear. Come on.”
The doorway to in-processing opened onto a long hallway. Behind them stood the first floor control station, a glass-enclosed room roughly the size of in-processing with desks and computer banks and telephones beeping at the two deputies inside. Just beyond the door to the control station, a pair of patrol deputies manhandled a struggling middle-aged man in jeans and a flannel shirt.
“I’m bit!” he cried. “I need to go to the hospital!”
“Sir, you got to stop…”
The man tilted his head down and threw up all over the dirty floor. Whatever he had, Justin hoped it wasn’t contagious. Petey led him down a long corridor. Closer to the darkened holding cells, the smell of pine cleaner yielded to the stronger scents of unwashed bodies and gas station bathrooms.
Please, God, let this be my only night in here. I know I don’t call you much, but I don’t ask for much, either. Okay?
The electric lock on the door opened when Petey spoke into his radio. He motioned Justin inside. The cell was small, with two bunks stacked against one wall and a steel toilet/sink combination on the other.
No cellmate, at least not for now. Chances of midnight butt rape: zero.
“Here you go. Sleep tight.”
“Buenas noches,” Justin said, but Petey was already gone, his footfalls clomping back up the corridor.
Justin climbed onto the top bunk. He folded his hands behind his head and stared up at the blank, cracked ceiling. Down the hall, the commotion at in-processing intensified. Screaming, yelling, chairs scraping. Keys on chains rattling. More screams echoing down the corridor, followed by Petey asking some guy what the damn hell was wrong with him. Sounded like the whole world was down there raising hell.
He was in jail.
“Fuck me,” he muttered.
Yep, said an invisible Kayleigh. He could almost see her wicked grin twisting in the bars. Fuck you.
He rolled over on his side and tried to block out the sounds. He closed his eyes but didn’t sleep, and he was still awake when the power went out.
12.
The power failure plunged the cell into the deepest darkness Justin had ever known. Ten seconds later the generators kicked on and the overheads once more bathed the floors and walls with their sickly glow.
Down the corridor, somebody screamed.
Blown transformer, he thought. He didn’t even sit up. He remained on his bunk, facing the wall, until he heard a noise at the bars behind him. At this point, he rolled over and looked.
He froze.
The man standing at the bars was a jailer. He looked vaguely familiar; Justin thought he might have seen him sitting at the monitors there in the control room, but he couldn’t tell for sure, not now. His face was a hideous white beneath the wisps of his military regulation haircut. Blood soaked into his uniform shirt from a wound in his neck.
What what what the FUCK is that
The eyes—solid black from corner to corner—pulled the life from Justin’s body like a medieval executioner drawing a prisoner’s bowels. He had to blink to keep himself from flying off the edge of madness.
It smiled and parted its white lips to reveal a set of fangs.
Now Justin sat up. His breath caught in his chest. He couldn’t even scream.
The jailer seemed to like that. He shook the bars, making them rattle in their tracks and click against the magnetic lock as a ring of keys jangled on his utility belt. Justin’s gaze darted to the keys, then back to that horrid face. His paralysis broke and he scooted backwards on his tiny bunk, back striking the wall.
All that thing has to do is open the bars and come in. Close the doors and take its sweet time.
It opened its mouth again. “Let me in,” it commanded in a guttural voice, lips barely moving.
He opened his own mouth to speak, but a desert in his throat wouldn’t let him. His head spun.
If that’s a vampire, it needs your permission to come in.
He summoned enough strength to croak, “No.”
The vampire turned his eyes towards the ceiling and roared with frustration. Justin pressed himself against the wall. If he could have, he’d have made himself part of it. So when that thing got hungry enough to come in without permission, it couldn’t get him.
Screams down the corridor again. Apparently perceiving more action elsewhere, it growled at him and lumbered off in the direction of the in-processing office. Justin swallowed, blinked and tried to remember to keep breathing.
What, what, what the fuck, what, what, what the fuck
The question repeated itself in his mind without punctuating, an insane little ditty that ran over and over. He reached through his jail-issue jumpsuit, grabbed a piece of flesh on his outer thigh and pinched. The pain anchored him. He needed that, an anchor. If he lost his shit here, he was a dead man.
And that would be bad, because right now you’re a living man stuck in a jail cell and apparently the people in charge around here have gone vampire. Think they’ll feed you at chow time?
Panic opened a great hole beneath him. Considering the possibility of starving to death or dying of thirst, he nearly fell right through it. He pinched harder.
Stop.
It stopped. The panic receded. He released his skin, savoring the dull ache where his thumb and forefinger had pressed together. He would not starve to death and he would not die of thirst. He would not do these things because the United States was a big country, North Carolina was a big state and at some point, somebody would realize some really bad shit had gone down at the Morgan County Law Enforcement Center. Probably very soon, as
in tomorrow morning. When none of the inmates showed up for court and somebody went to check on them.
Thinking ahead, he stood and ripped a sleeve from his striped shirt. He jammed it in the drain of the sink and ran the water until the sink was nearly overflowing. There. Just in case the water lines lost pressure, now he had a water reserve. He could refill it as long as the lines held. He had resolved his water problem, at least temporarily. He was taking charge of his fate, taking charge of this situation.
There. Now you can die of starvation instead of thirst.
He drank the water and ran the faucet to replace it, studying the flow for any signs of weakening. Seeing none, he returned to his bunk and sat with his back resting against the wall. He stared at the bars and let his mind roll.
Back in high school, his American Literature teacher had told a story about the exhumation of a 19th-century graveyard she had seen as a college student up at William and Mary. They were putting a mall in or something, and the developer had agreed to move the graveyard to a final resting place with less value on the commercial real estate market. For whatever reason, she wanted to go watch.
Some of these coffins were over two hundred years old, she said. So when the workers raised them, a lot of them broke. The bodies were just rags and bones at that point, but the thing was, some of those coffins had claw marks on the insides of the lids. Because the people hadn’t been dead, not all the way.
He remembered the shiver that had passed through his body. People passing out and waking up in a wooden box beneath the earth, pitch black dark, beating on the lids of their coffins, screaming, clawing at the wood. Not knowing that a hundred and forty years would pass before anyone would come get them. Screaming, shrieking, crying until they ran out of oxygen.
Or not. Maybe air filtered down through the loose soil. Maybe they lived down there until they died of thirst. Takes a few days.
Justin stared at the washbasin. His fabric drain plug wasn’t working; the water level was falling. In just a few minutes, it had dropped at least an inch.
The Last Days of October Page 7
