Lot Lizards

by Ray Garton

"That guh-girl!" He pointed with a shaking hand. "Just ran through here. Stop her!"

  "What girl?"

  "The one who—she just ran—she was just—"

  "Nobody's been through here but you." Annoyed, he went back to work, muttering, "The hell you guys doin' in there, anyways?"

  Byron spun around, nearly falling, and staggered across the room to David's side.

  His eyes and mouth were still open wide, but he'd stopped panting. In fact, he looked like he'd stopped breathing. His erection twitched, smeared with blood; his dark pubic hairs were caked with it, matted and glistening, and more of it ran from the wound beside his groin.

  Byron fell onto the sofa and slapped a hand onto David's chest, shaking him as he barked, "David! David, are you okay?"

  The young man blinked, lifted his head slowly, lips curling into a drunken smile. When he saw Byron, the smile disappeared and he blinked some more, rapidly, confused. "Whaf re you..." He looked around, frowning. "Where'd she go? She wasn't even—she didn' fin—"

  He saw the blood. Stared at it the way he might have stared at a tap dancing frog. Then he screamed, "Jesus Gawd Jesus Gawd I'm bleeding I'm bleeding Jesus Gawd Jesus Gaw —"

  Byron gripped his shoulders and pushed him back, squeezing as he said, "S'okay, Dave, s'okay, now, you're gonna be fine, just fine, so calm down, now, calm down." Then, over his shoulder, he shouted, "Get some help!"

  Buddy came to the door and stared for a long moment, wiping his hands on a dirty rag. "The hell happened here?"

  "Goddammit, just get some help!" In the small space, Byron's tremendous voice sounded as if it could move furniture and Buddy flinched, then hurried away. Turning to David, he asked softly, "What happened, now, David? Tell me. What' d she do?"

  He'd stopped screaming and was whimpering now, head shaking back and forth, back and forth as he said, again and again, "Not bad, please God, don't let it be bad, not bad, not too bad..."

  There was a large metal sink in the corner of the room with a paper towel dispenser above it on the wall. Byron got a towel, wet it, and knelt beside David, dabbing the blood away gently.

  David had stopped looking down.

  There were two wounds—puncture marks—and not very neat ones.

  Byron pressed the wet towel over the wounds and tried to stop the bleeding, thinking all the while of the girl. Her teeth. No, no...fangs, he reminded himself, blowing hard through pursed lips and puffing his cheeks.

  "She bit me, Byron," David rasped, clutching Byron's sleeve. His face was colorless and his saucered eyes were watering. "And I knew it. I knew it."

  "You knew what?"

  "I knew what she was doing, but...but I couldn't, you know...stop her because it...it felt good. I thought she was gonna suck me off but she bit me and, Goddamn, Byron, if felt good!"

  He stared up at Byron with the expression of a man who has just realized that everything he's ever been taught in his whole life thus far is wrong; for a moment, his grip on Byron's sleeve tightened, then his whole body became limp and his head fell back, mouth open. He made more whimpering sounds—"Ooohh-ho, oh-ho boy, ooohh..."—then said, "I don't feel so good, Byron."

  "Yeah, I know, buddy, but you're gonna be fine. Somebody's coming." He stared at David's deadly pale complexion, noticed the way his skin seemed to sag as if he'd lost even the slightest muscle tone. A simple bite would not have done that. But Byron knew it had not been a simple bite.

  He remembered the awful slurping sounds he'd heard upon entering the room...

  "Well," Byron said, trying to sound jovial, "maybe this'11 teach you. No more screwing around on the job." He chuckled and patted David's shoulder. But he was not jovial and the chuckle and gesture were lies. He was worried. That girl, whoever she was, had sucked blood from David Pike's crotch and now she was out there somewhere.

  Worst of all, Byron could not—no matter how hard he tried—remember what she looked like. And something told him that David wouldn't remember either...

  CHAPTER 10

  About twenty minutes before Byron discovered David in the shop's back room, a terrible accident occurred on Interstate 5 between the Sierra Gold Pan Truck Stop and Yreka. It was the kind of accident that no one involved saw coming, not even in the final two seconds before it actually happened, and which no one involved could explain later. It just happened.

  Eight vehicles were involved.

  Three of the vehicles were eighteen wheelers, two of which were tankers, and their trailers were scattered like seeds in a new garden. The trailers, once they came to rest, managed to block Interstate 5 in both directions, the tanks spilling their contents onto the highway.

  This was the news that Deputy Travis Cody of the Yreka Sheriff's Office brought with him when he arrived at the Sierra Gold Pan Truck Stop in response to a call regarding a parking lot fight. In the office of the truck stop's travel store, Cody shared the news hurriedly with the injured man, one Malcolm Osick, and one of the store's cashiers, Bette Fremon.

  "I'm really sorry," Cody said, "but you're gonna be cut off from the hospital for a long time because of the chemical spill and I gotta get over to the scene right now, so you'll have to do the best you can until I can get somebody over here or come back for you myself."

  Osick lay groaning on a cot and Bette sat beside him, an open first aid kit on her lap, dabbing Osick's battered nose with a piece of gauze dipped in alcohol.

  Cody was winding up his apology quickly as he backed out of the office when he collided with Buddy Pritchard, who was stumbling into the office looking haggard and a little ill.

  "Oh, um, yeah, yeah," Buddy said, running a hand through his wet snowy hair, "Byron said you'd be here. Um, yeah, um, we need you over to the shop. There's a guy there, David, a guy from the gas island. He's, um, bleeding. Really bad. I don't know what's happened, but there's, um, blood. A lotta blood. I think he's hurt pretty bad."

  Cody rolled his eyes slowly and sighed, shaking his head. That was when he suggested that Bette get on the P. A. and page a doctor or nurse...

  "Where the hell have you been?" Adelle hissed when Jon returned.

  Jon started to scoot in beside Dara when Doug saw him freeze, half seated, eyes locked on the space between Doug and Adelle and just above Cece's head. He didn't move for a moment, just stared, suspended in his awkward about-to-sit position. Then he dropped into the seat, blinking rapidly, suddenly looking ashen, drained, as if he'd just seen aliens land in the parking lot.

  Jon said quietly, "I was just...um, playing some video games... is all." He bowed his head and frowned at his cheeseburger.

  "Well, your food's getting cold," Adelle said, her tone softer now. "C'mon, eat up, hon." She was just now beginning to wind down from her conversation with her sister; Doug could almost see the tension rolling off her like beads of perspiration.

  Jon picked up the burger and took a bite hesitantly, as if he weren't sure what rested between the sesame seed buns. As he chewed, his eyes wandered to that space above Cece's head again, staring at something.

  Trying to be inconspicuous, Doug looked back over his shoulder. He saw nothing unusual, nothing to warrant the troubled look in Jon's eyes. There was just the crowded restaurant and, seated in the next booth, the two loud unbathed men Doug had seen out front earlier; the worst of the two faced Doug and both were hunched over their plates eating noisily and sloppily.

  "You feeling okay, Jon?" Doug asked.

  He jerked as if startled by the question and said, "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." He turned his gaze to the window and peered between the open blinds. As he ate, his eyes darted back and forth between the window and that space behind Doug, as if there were something back there distracting him, tugging at his attention.

  Doug decided it was the wreck; what had happened— what might have happened—was probably just now hitting Jon. It had struck Doug earlier; he'd been standing at a payphone thumbing through the Yellow Pages in search of an all night towing service and garage when he'd realized, quite sudd
enly, as if it hadn't occurred to him before, that they'd had a car accident and that they could have been terribly hurt, even killed...all of them. The thought made his scalp tingle.

  After two calls, Doug realized that there was no chance they'd get the car towed before daylight, let alone get back on the road by then. No one, in fact, was going anywhere. The freeways were closing, the lights in the truck stop were flickering and the snow was falling harder than ever, so hard that the plough couldn't keep up with it and the parking lot was getting buried in the white powder. He'd finally given up and replaced the receiver with a long weary sigh, hoping Adelle's mother could hang on until they got there...whenever that would be.

  They ate in silence for a while. The girls' concentration was focused entirely on their food while Adelle ate slowly and thoughtfully; Jon, on the other hand, continued his mysterious staring. It was so annoying that Doug even looked over his shoulder a couple more times, expecting to see something interesting. Finally, he asked, "Jon, what are you staring at?"

  "Staring? Nothing. Nothing. I'm not staring." Jon's response was quick and breathy, trembling with guilt, and Jon was about to pursue the question when a timid female voice spoke over the P.A. system:

  "Your attention, please? Your attention? We're sorry for the interruption, but... if there are any doctors or nurses dining in the restaurant, could you please come to the register? We have two injured men who are in need of attention. If any medical personnel dining in the restaurant could please come to the register, we'd really appreciate it."

  Adelle sighed and put down her fork, glancing at Doug.

  "C'mon, honey, you're tired," Doug said. "Let someone else—"

  "That could've been us, you know," she said quietly. "We got off lucky tonight." She looked around to see if anyone else was getting up. A short, well dressed middle aged man was leaving his table and heading for the front, dabbing his mouth with a napkin. Patting Cece's knee, she said, "Let me out, hon. I'll be back in a while."

  "Want me to come?" Doug asked.

  She smiled tiredly and shook her head. "I doubt they'll need X-rays."

  As Doug slid back into the booth, he said, "It's probably nothing serious. Probably just a—" He stopped and stared across the table.

  Jon's cheeseburger lay scattered on his plate where he'd dropped it; a piece of lettuce hung from his lips and his face had lost all color as he stared open-mouthed after his mother.

  "Jon, what's the matter?"

  "What...what do you think...happened?"

  "Oh, it's probably nothing. Remember that guy we saw when we came in? The guy who was bleeding? Probably him. Probably a couple guys knocked each other around, is all."

  Adelle returned to the table and leaned over Doug. "I need my coat," she said. "One of the guys is outside."

  As she walked away, Jon wiped his mouth quickly on his napkin and stood.

  "What’re you doing?" Doug asked.

  "Going with her."

  "No, you shouldn't—"

  But he was gone.

  "He is so gross," Dara sneered. "He gets off on seeing people bleed."

  "Well, girls," Doug said, "I guess if s just us." He started twirling his fork in his spaghetti, but his fingers slowed down a bit and he cocked his head to one side when he heard urgent, hissing whispers from the booth behind him.

  "—whatta you think? What would happen then, huh?"

  "It coulda been anything! A heart attack, a-a-a, I don't know, a kid with a bloody nose!"

  "I don't care what it coulda been. Get off your ass and check it out."

  A utensil clattered angrily against a plate. "How come I gotta do all this shit? I'm haulin' the fuckin' queen!"

  "Whatsat give you, seniority? You think that's some kinda privilege? You're haulin' that fuckin' thing because I don't wanna get near it. Now get out there, Goddammit!" Keys jangled noisily. "An' here. Take these and get my cigars outta my truck."

  Doug felt the back of his seat shift as the man sitting directly behind him got up.

  There was something odd about those two men, something beneath their soiled, lumpy exteriors that was equally repulsive. Doug jerked his head from side to side once, as if shooing a fly, and continued eating his spaghetti.

  As he followed the small group through the shop at a distance, Jon heard the short man introduce himself as Dr. Phillip Kane. Jon's mother walked beside the doctor hurriedly, led by the woman from the travel store and one of the mechanics. They went down a narrow corridor at the back of the shop and through a doorway. Jon slowed his pace and approached the door cautiously, not wanting to be seen.

  All four of them joined a police officer and the janitor from the restaurant and hunched over a man on a sofa. There was a great deal of blood on the man's bare legs.

  "Good God!" the doctor snapped. "This man's lost a lot of blood!"

  "Yeah, that's obvious," Deputy Cody murmured.

  "No," Dr. Kane said, "more. I mean more blood than there is here. Was he stabbed? Did you bring him here? Was he—"

  "Somebody bit him," the black man said.

  "Bit him? You're kidding?" To the man on the sofa, the doctor said, "Sir? I'm a doctor. Could you tell me what happened? Sir?"

  The man simply groaned.

  After watching for a few more minutes, Jon turned and went back down the corridor, through the shop and out into the cold. He jogged to the corner of the main building and leaned against the wall. It was more than just the temperature that made him shiver. He knew what was wrong with the bleeding man in that small dark room, but no one would believe him if he told them.

  No one but his dad...

  She smiled in the dark of the basement beneath the restaurant's kitchen, sitting on a crate, hugging her knees to her chest. Her name was Amy.

  Things were working out much better than she'd expected.

  Months ago, she'd decided it was time to break away. The problem was how. She couldn't do it alone. She needed someone to watch over her during the daylight hours, someone to protect her while she slept. But she wanted someone...nice. Someone besides that hideous slob who drove the truck. He smelled, and not just of body odor; his obese body reeked of ill health and decay. But worse than him was the creature that rode in the other truck, the thing that called itself her master, the monster that had made her what she was and now claimed ownership of her soul. The others feared her, would never think of trying to escape her. But Amy was different than the others. She'd always been different than the others.

  Amy had been fleeing people who claimed ownership of her long before she'd been bled. She'd fled her cold, affluent parents when she was thirteen; her father's business and her mother's social life had left no time in their lives for Amy. She'd remained a stranger to them no matter how hard she fought for their attention and love; their money, belongings and friends always came first. Since she was a little girl, Amy had had a gnawing fear that she would grow up to be like them, and nothing frightened her more. She'd decided, finally, to leave the luxurious surroundings with which they'd provided her just to keep from catching whatever disease of the soul had made them so empty, so ultimately lifeless. Even now, she reminded herself often that she would not allow herself to become like them. She'd fled an abusive boyfriend who'd threatened to kill her if she ever tried to leave; and she'd escaped the law when she was nailed for prostitution at the age of fifteen.

  Now she planned to flee the thing that stayed in the cool darkness of that trailer. She'd seen it only a few times, but once was more than enough. Although she could not change what had been done to her, what she had already become, she was determined—just as she had been with her parents—not to become like that creature. Perhaps it had lived so long— centuries, maybe thousands of years—that it had simply stopped resembling the human it had once been...if it had ever been human. If Amy was doomed to live as long, she would not follow suit. She'd avoided becoming the walking mannequins that were her parents; she would avoid becoming like the monster that never
left its dark shelter.

  It was true, the Queen did have a powerful hold on her, a psychic grip that would be difficult to break. Her invisible presence never left Amy, never allowed her to feel alone. But she was certain the hold could be broken. With distance. Distance was her goal.

  And Kevin was going to help her reach it.

  "Not me," she whispered to herself, as she often did, eyes closed as if she were praying. "Not me. I'll never become like that. Not me."

  But her eyes snapped open wide suddenly and she stared into the dark trying not to shudder.

  She felt the Queen's presence within in her. As always when she voiced her planned independence, Amy could feel that presence laughing...

  CHAPTER 11

  The snowfall had become almost as thick as fog and the back lot was a shadowy forest of long silent trucks with darkened lights and snow covered hoods. Bill wandered between them cautiously, following the shadows with the silence of a cat, blending into the darkness whenever someone walked by. He'd heard the man's scream coming from the shop and considered investigating, but thought better of it; others would be there in seconds and he didn't want to be seen. If it was what he thought it was—and he had little doubt—there was nothing he could do about it now; this was more important.

  He found the black Carsey Bros, trucks easily. He walked the length of the nearest one slowly, running his palms lightly along the side, head cocked, listening. There were no sounds inside, not so much as a breath. The trailer was empty. He moved toward the next one, stopping three feet away.

  Something in his gut twisted and, for a long moment, he couldn't breathe.

  Staring at the side of the trailer, Bill sensed—knew —that he was being watched. No...not watched: observed. And not with eyes...

  Something on the other side of the trailer's long white wall was aware of him, tracking him, sizing him up. A solitary something, alone in the trailer's darkness, still and silent. Something he could almost see with his mind's eye, with the senses newly awakened in him, senses he'd been discovering slowly over the past months...