A Wasteland of Strangers

by Bill Pronzini

“I won’t tell you that. Not yet.”

  “But you’d take me to him.”

  “If you had the stuff he needs.”

  “I can get it. All except a tetanus shot—there’s no way I can manage that.”

  “Where’ll you have to go?”

  “Rexall Pharmacy.”

  “They won’t get suspicious or anything?”

  “No.” I was breathing hard. Scared and hyped up both, the same as she was. Jeez-us!

  “He’ll have to have some food,” Trisha said. “And clothes. All he’s got to wear now are a couple of blankets.”

  “That’s no problem. Plenty of food here. And Earle, my husband, is nearly the same size. Money, though … I don’t have much.”

  “He doesn’t need money. He’s got his wallet.”

  “What about transportation? Do you have a car?”

  “No. We’ll have to go in yours.”

  “That’s no problem. But I meant a way for him to travel when he’s well enough … Oh, God, worry about that later. First things first. And we’d better hurry.” Before I had time to think too much about what I was getting myself into. Before I could change my mind. And before Earle decided to come home. “Kitchen’s through the doorway over there. You gather up some food—there’re paper bags under the sink. I’ll get the clothes.”

  We were both on our feet, and for about five seconds we stood with our eyes locked. Thinking the same thing, probably. When she’d arrived, less than twenty minutes ago, we’d been more or less strangers, a generation apart and barely civil to each other whenever we met. Now, thanks to John Faith, a kind of serious bonding thing had happened. Well, that was the sort he was, and I guess I knew it the first time I laid eyes on him in the Northlake. You were either for him or against him, no matter what he said or did. All the way, either way.

  George Petrie

  I AM BEING followed.

  By a dark-green van, one of the small, newer ones with the slanted front end. I can’t tell if the driver is the gray-haired man from the Truckee motel or somebody else; can’t even be sure of how many people are inside. The van’s windshield is tinted and splinters of sunlight off glass and metal make it even more difficult to see.

  I first spotted the van outside Sparks, when I pulled back onto the highway after buying a pair of canvas suitcases to keep the money in. It stayed behind me when I took the Highway 50 cutoff, and it’s been there ever since through Fallon and across the open desert past Sand Mountain. Every time I speed up or slow down or pass another car, it does the same.

  It has to be the gray-haired man. No one from Pomo could’ve tracked me; no other stranger could possibly know about the garbage bags or suspect what’s in them. I don’t remember a dark-green van in the motel parking lot, but it could’ve been parked behind one of the units. Must’ve followed me all the way from Truckee. Too much traffic for me to pick it out until the flow thinned coming through Reno.

  I don’t know what to do.

  Keep on going to Ely as planned? Another two hundred miles of empty desert and barren mountains, sun glare and heat shimmers off the highway, even at this time of year, that have my eyes burning, my head aching? No. Couldn’t take the tension. And some of the country ahead is even more desolate. He could overtake me without much effort; this old Buick can’t outrun a van like that. Force me off the road when there’s no one around. He’s bound to have a weapon, and there’s nothing I can use to defend myself. Easy for him to kill me, bury my body where no one would ever find it—

  Road sign. Junction with State Highway 361 six miles ahead.

  There’ll be a rest stop; usually is at a desert crossroads. Service station, convenience store, maybe a restaurant. People. If I pull in there he’ll follow me and then … what? Confront him? He wouldn’t dare try anything with people around. But confronting him won’t accomplish anything. Let me get a good look at him, that’s all. He’d deny following me. Brazen it out. Then sit back in his van and wait for me to drive out onto the highway again.

  Three miles to the junction. And he’s even closer behind me now, crowding up, the sun like fire on that tinted windshield.

  Christ Jesus, what am I going to do!

  Earle Banner

  SATURDAY’S MY DAY off, but I went down to the shop anyway since I didn’t have nothing else to do. Stan was there and we shot the bull for a while, mostly about what a piece Storm Carey was and how that bugger Faith got off too easy, sucking lake water. “Should’ve had his nuts put in a vise,” Stan said, and I said, “Yeah, that’s for sure,” but I was thinking, Yeah, it’s too bad about Storm, she was a sweet lay, some of the best I ever had, but that didn’t change the fact she was a bitch and she’d been asking for what Faith give her for a long time. Same as Lori kept asking for it. Bet she didn’t think Faith got off too easy. Bet she was sorry he was dead meat, even if she hadn’t been letting him boink her and he’d had to go after Storm instead.

  After a while a couple of the other guys showed up, and then somebody said why didn’t we go over to Pandora’s and get us a few cold ones? So we did that. Regulation pool table in Pandora’s, better balanced than most you find in bars, and we started playing eight ball, loser buys a round. Before you knew it it was past noon and I’d had seven or eight Buds and was about half in the bag. Feeling good, yeah, and horny, too. Beer always does that to me, fires up the blood, puts lead in the old pencil. The guys wanted to shoot another game, but I said no, I was gonna go home and eat my old lady for lunch. They all laughed, and I walked out and headed for my Ford.

  And who did I see across the street, leaving the Rexall Pharmacy with a big sack in her hot little hands? Yeah. Lori. My sweet, lying wife, supposed to be home, says to me this morning she was just gonna putter around the house all day.

  She wasn’t alone, neither. Had a passenger, somebody waiting for her in that little Jap car of hers. I couldn’t see who it was, wrong angle and the windshield being dirty, but I figured it must be some lousy son of a bitch she’d picked up somewhere and I was about ready to charge over there and drag both their asses out into the street. But then she was inside and putting the car in gear and coming my way, so I ducked down behind a parked car. When I looked up again as they were passing I seen her passenger was a woman. No, not even that—a teenage kid. Brian Marx’s kid, Trisha.

  What the hell?

  I ran around the corner to the Ford and made a fast U-turn and swung out onto Main. The Jap car was stopped at the light two blocks north. She could’ve been on her way to do more shopping, or going to Brian’s house to drop the kid off, or going home—only she wasn’t, none of those things. She stayed right on Main, and once she was clear of the business district she goosed it up to forty-five. Usually she don’t drive no more than the speed limit, scared to death of getting a ticket. Heading for the Northlake Cutoff, on her way to someplace she had no business being, by God, her and that tight-assed little Trisha Marx.

  Wherever she was going, she was gonna have company she didn’t expect. Yeah, and if she was looking to let some other guy eat her for lunch, she’d be one sorry babe. I didn’t feel horny no more. I felt mean as a snake with a gopher’s balls stuck in its throat.

  Trisha Marx

  I DIDN’T TELL Lori where we were going until we were almost there. It wasn’t a trust thing; I’d been pretty sure back there at her homestead and she hadn’t done or said anything to make me change my mind: She wouldn’t give John away to the cops. I guess what it was was that John and I had this secret together, a really special secret, the kind you’d be reluctant to let your best friend in on, and now I had to share it with somebody who was practically a stranger. You want to keep a secret like that all to yourself as long as you can, sort of savor it, because when you finally do share it it’s never quite so special anymore.

  When I finally told Lori it was Nucooee Point Lodge she said, “How’d he get all the way over here?”

  “I took him.”

  “You took him? How?”

&n
bsp; So I had to tell her about that, too. And afterward I felt kind of let down, not nearly so torqued as before. Right. Share a secret and it’s never quite the same.

  “A good thing you know how to drive a boat,” she said. “If it’d been me, I don’t think I could’ve done it.”

  That picked me up again, a little. “I didn’t have any trouble.”

  “Must’ve been scary, though. All the way across the lake in a borrowed boat.”

  “No,” I lied. “I wasn’t scared a bit.”

  The turn for the lodge was just ahead. Once, the driveway was wide enough for a semi, but grass and oleanders had grown in on both sides and choked it down to one narrow lane. There was a chain across it, and a No Trespassing sign, but you could squeeze around the chain through high grass on the south side; that’s how the bunch of us got in the three times we’d been over to party. I pointed out the way to Lori and we bounced over behind a screen of trees, onto what used to be a packed-dirt parking lot. The earth was all chewed up now, and tangled with blackberry bushes, and you had to go slow. But once you were at the back end, there was no way anybody could see in from the road.

  We unloaded the food and clothes and medical stuff, took them around to the service door. As soon as we were inside I called out to John, so he’d know right away who was coming. When we got to the lobby he was sitting up on the couch, the blankets pulled around him to his chin.

  “Any trouble?”

  I said, “No. We’ve got all the stuff.”

  Lori said, “Let’s have some light.” I found the flashlight and switched it on. “Hold it steady, Trisha.” I did that while she knelt beside the couch, laid her hand on his forehead. “How you doing?” she asked him.

  “Holding my own.”

  “Well, you’re not feverish. That’s a good sign.”

  “Lori, I’m sorry to drag you into this …”

  “Nobody dragged me here. I came because I wanted to. Are you in much pain?”

  “Not as long as I stay still.”

  “Bleeding?”

  “Doesn’t feel like it.”

  She unwrapped the blankets and then took off the tape and pads. I saw the way she looked at the wounds and at him and I thought: She really cares about him. I felt this little pang of jealousy. Stupid, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t like sharing John any more than I liked sharing his rescue.

  “How bad?” he asked.

  “Could be worse. Good thing Trisha found the peroxide. Holes look clean—no inflammation.”

  Well, okay. John probably wouldn’t even be alive right now if I hadn’t heard him moaning and did what I did to help him. That was something I’d never have to share.

  “So I’ll live.”

  “Chances are. When’d you last have a tetanus shot?”

  “… Can’t remember.”

  “Within the past five years?”

  “No, longer ago than that.”

  “Within the last ten?”

  “Seven or eight, about.”

  “Should be okay, then. I wish I had a way to give you one, to be safe, but I don’t.” She was opening up one of the sacks, taking out stuff she’d bought at the pharmacy. Thin rubber gloves. Bottled water. A package of sponges. A thermometer. Lots of gauze and tape. Some tubes of Neosporin. A big bottle of aspirin. “I’ll clean the wounds, put antibiotic ointment on, and pack them tight. That should do it for now. You’ll have to change the dressing, put on more ointment, at least once a day. More often if there’s any bleeding. Watch me and you’ll know how to do it.”

  “Will I be okay to travel?”

  “I’d say no if we were someplace else. You should rest a couple of days, minimum. But this place, all the dirt and dust and rodent crap … you’d be better off in a clean bed.”

  “A clean bed far away from Pomo County. Question is, how do I get there?”

  Lori didn’t answer. She had the gloves on and was sponging the wounds with bottled water. It was yucky to watch and I looked away. Nothing else to look at in the lobby except shapes and shadows. Something creaked upstairs. Back in the summer, some of the guys had climbed up there to explore; but not me, not after that bat flew so close to my head. Old hotels are weird places, all right. That one in the Stephen King flick, where Jack Nicholson goes around grinning and waving an ax … wow.

  It took Lori a long time to finish treating John’s wounds. What seemed like a long time, anyway. I got tired standing up and holding the flashlight at arm’s length, so I sat cross-legged on the grungy floor and propped my elbows on my knees and held it that way. Once I heard a skittering at the big open fireplace and swung the beam over there, and Lori said real sharp, “For God’s sake, put that light back here.” I didn’t blame her for yelling. She couldn’t see in the dark.

  While she was taking John’s temperature I went and picked up a couple of the candles that were on the fireplace hearth. I’d forgotten about them until I flashed the light over that way. I lit the wicks with some matches from my purse and set the candles on folding chairs, one at either end of the couch. The flames gave off plenty of light. Softer, too; the flash glare had started to hurt my eyes.

  John’s temperature was one degree above normal. Lori said that wasn’t bad, after him being in the lake and in wet clothes all night. She gave him some aspirins and told him to take more every few hours. Then she unwrapped a nutrition bar she’d bought, made him eat it and drink more water. Then she laid out her husband’s clothes and said, “You can get into these when we’re gone. There’s an extra shirt in case one gets bloody.”

  “I owe you,” John said. “Both of you.”

  “You don’t owe me a thing.”

  “Me neither,” I said.

  “Yeah I do, and I can’t repay you. And I still have to ask one more favor, Lori.”

  “I know. Transportation.”

  “I can’t walk away from here.”

  “You can’t drive, either. I’m not about to steal a car for you. That leaves me and my Toyota.”

  “I wish it could be some other way.”

  “So do I. I’ll do it, but not right away. For one thing, I have to take Trisha home—”

  “I can get home on my own,” I said.

  “No, not from way over here. And if I don’t go home myself pretty soon, he’ll figure something’s up. My husband, I mean. The last thing we need is for him to come looking.”

  John said, “If he lays a hand on you again—”

  “Never mind that. Thing is, I won’t be able to get back out again today without making him suspicious. Besides, you need to rest, build up strength. One night in this dump ought to be okay.”

  “How soon tomorrow?”

  “Before noon sometime.”

  “You sure you can get out in the morning?”

  “Pretty sure. I’ll think up some kind of excuse.”

  I asked John, “Where’ll you go that’s safe?”

  “As far from here as possible.”

  “And then what? After you’re healed, I mean.”

  “You don’t want to know. Neither of you.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. Once I’m gone I’m out of your lives for good.”

  “We’re supposed to just forget you?”

  “That’s right. Forget you ever met me.”

  “I’ll never forget you, John. Never.”

  He was quiet while Lori and I got ready to leave. Then he said a funny thing, like we were already gone and he was talking to himself. He said, “The only ones who care … they’re the ones you can hurt the most.”

  Earle Banner

  NUCOOEE POINT LODGE.

  Yeah. Oh yeah.

  I was about three hundred yards back, just coming through a curve, when the little Jap car turned off. I braked and geared down, so when I rolled past the overgrown driveway I was doing less than twenty-five and I could see her plowing through grass and weeds to get around the chain barrier. I didn’t see no other car, but you could’ve hidden a fuckin�
�� house trailer back there behind the trees.

  I drove on a ways until I found a spot where I could turn around. Then I come back and pulled off onto the verge just down from the driveway. Her and Brian’s kid, nobody else? Couldn’t get enough dick, so now she’s after pussy too, teenage pussy? But I didn’t think that was it. Not Lori, she was no AC-DC. Had to be they were meeting somebody at the lodge. One guy, maybe more—a goddamn orgy. Just thinking about it, the top of my head felt like it was gonna come off.

  What I ached to do was go over there, catch them at it, beat the crap out of her and anybody else got in my way. If I’d had my .38 with me I might’ve done it. But I didn’t have no idea how many guys was over there, who they were, how tough they were. Those two bitches might be taking on half a dozen, for all I knew. Without an equalizer, maybe I’d be the one to get stomped and wouldn’t she love to see that?

  Maybe I oughta go home, get the piece, and come back.

  No. Take too long. And I still wouldn’t know how many there was until I got in there and I didn’t like the idea of using the gun unless I had to, not on anybody except Lori. Shit, it wasn’t the guy’s fault. Tail gets waved in a man’s face, he grabs for it—you can’t expect no different from a guy. Wasn’t even the kid’s fault. Teenager looking for kicks … all them teenage kids fuck like bunnies nowadays, the more the merrier. Lori’d set the whole thing up, most likely. Yeah. Set up an orgy, more the merrier for her, too. Kicks galore.

  I’ll give her kicks. Give her some kicks she’ll never forget.

  I sat there a while longer, steaming. A couple of cars whooshed by, and it come to me that one of ’em could’ve been a sheriff’s deputy or highway patrolman. Better get out of here before a cop did come along and stop and ask what I was doing. I jammed her into gear, rolled out past the lodge entrance. Couldn’t see nothing at all back there. Hid the Jap car and got inside somehow … humping in there on the floor with rats and spiders for an audience. Pictures that put in my head made me want to puke. I couldn’t remember ever being this crazy mad before.