Thunder Road

by Thorne, Tamara

Carlo Pelegrine

  CARLO GAVE THE SIMMERING MARINARA SAUCE A QUICK STIR WITH a wooden spoon, then returned to the cutting board to finish putting together a salad. He was so nervous that his hand shook as he picked up the paring knife and sliced through a large tomato. Having Alex to dinner was playing with fire, he knew that, and he’d picked up his phone to cancel several times this afternoon.

  But he couldn’t. He wanted to see her more than he’d ever wanted anything, and he promised himself that he would keep himself under control, refusing to even entertain the possibility that something would happen to . . . mar the evening. You have a gift for understatement, my friend. He smiled bitterly and finished slicing the tomato, trying to keep his mind on the food, but unable to stop it from drifting back to the last killing.

  It happened in his own neighborhood in Bensonhurst. He’d spent several hours after school playing basketball with Ted Furillo and some other guys at New Utrecht High, and he was dribbling the basketball as he walked home, enjoying the way the chill winter air felt in his lungs. Checking his watch, he realized that if he didn’t step on it, he’d be late for dinner, so he tucked the ball under his arm and sprinted through the early evening darkness until he came to the shortcut: an alley separating two rows of brownstone apartment buildings, just off Thirteenth Avenue.

  The alley was deserted except for trash cans and bins that made it barely wide enough to accommodate a car. Bare bulbs outside some of the buildings cast shadowy light down its length, and reflected the eyes of a rat crouching between two garbage cans. Carlo knew he’d make it home in time for dinner now, so he let the basketball bounce, once, twice, then started dribbling it down the alley, zigzagging back and forth, circling a lone garbage can, zigzagging some more.

  “Hi, Carlo.”

  Halfway down the alley, he stopped dead in his tracks and looked around for the girl who had spoken. A moment later, she stepped out of the shadows.

  “Sally?” he asked. She had been a couple years ahead of him in school until she dropped out two years ago. She had a reputation as an easy lay, and Carlo had heard she’d taken up with a gang in the last year or so. He wanted to sink into the asphalt, he was so embarrassed about her seeing him bounce the ball and goofing around, like a little middle school kid.

  “Yeah.” She smiled, a white flash between violet-red lips. “It’s me. You still in school?”

  “I’m a senior.”

  “Bet you get straight A’s, don’t you?” She snapped her gum and blew a pink bubble.

  He shrugged, unwilling to be further embarrassed. “Uh, how are you?”

  “I could use some money.”

  Carlo glanced around, wondering if he was about to be jumped, but nothing, no one, moved. “Out of work?”

  She smiled and came farther out of the shadows. “I’m self employed.”

  He stared at her, taking in the stiletto heels, black nylons, red miniskirt, and the red and white striped tube top that barely covered her nipples. There was a tattoo of a rose on the swell of her left breast, and he couldn’t stop staring at it.

  “You like it?” she asked, stepping up to him.

  He jerked his eyes up to her face, to the bleached hair and thick makeup that only accentuated her acne scars. “I, uh, just never saw a tattoo on a girl before.”

  “You want to touch it?”

  His heart pounded and his fingers came up.

  She laughed, stepping away. “You got money? You can touch it for five dollars.” She blew another bubble, let it pop against her lips, then used her tongue to slowly, suggestively, pull the gum back in. “I bet you’re a virgin, ain’t you, Carlo? I’ll blow a virgin for ten. Take his cherry for twenty. How ’bout it?”

  The carefully buried memories of the two other whores tried to push to the surface. He fought them down and dug out his wallet, feeling almost like he was in a trance. His hormones refused to listen to the warning bells going off in his brain. He showed her a twenty. “Where?”

  Smiling, she took his money and his hand, led him to a space behind two large Dumpsters, and pulled him down onto some dirty blankets. She peeled down her tube top, revealing her already sagging breasts.

  A bare bulb cast enough light to let him examine the rose tattoo.

  “Aren’t you gonna unzip?” she asked, snapping her gum. She rucked up her skirt as he knelt above her. “I ain’t wearing any underwear.”

  He made no reply, but watched his trembling fingers reach out to touch the tattoo. The hand, a separate entity, traced the outline of the rose, then the fingers trailed across her breasts. The other hand joined the first and they pushed themselves across her breasts, up to the shoulders, together to the neck. He saw them begin to squeeze, saw her eyes start to bug out, her tongue thrust from between her lips, the pink wad of the gum tumbling to the asphalt. For a few moments she made little choking sounds.

  After her breathing stopped, he continued to squeeze her neck, or rather, his alien hands did. He hadn’t remembered the other killings, but this time he witnessed every detail as if he were trapped in someone else’s mind, a voyeur watching the crime. The hands let go of her and the right one pulled his jackknife from his pants pocket, opened it, then traced an oval around the rose on her breast.

  Horrified, he watched as the knife blade worked under the skin and then his hand began carefully excising the tattoo.

  It was half-done when he was released. Suddenly he could feel the knife in his hands, the flesh resisting the blade, feel her still warm skin. “No,” he whispered, pulling the knife free. “No!”

  By rote, he wiped the blade on her skirt and put it away. Numbly he backed up. He’d been able to forget the other two prostitutes only because he didn’t remember what he had done. He’d known something was wrong, but he’d managed to shove it away. Until now, he had no proof that he was “the Peeler,” as the newspapers had dubbed him.

  The cold, detached part of him helped him remember to retrieve the basketball and continue down the alley toward home. It helped him eat dinner, make conversation, and finish out the school year. It stopped him from killing himself, and it helped him fake his own death instead.

  He was a Jekyll and Hyde, part innocence and part pure evil, and it became his life task to keep the evil a prisoner within. Now, as he stirred the marinara sauce once more, he promised himself that if he even thought about laying a hand on Alex, he would take his rifle and blow his brains out. He would kill the monster.

  75

  Tom Abernathy

  HE’D PLANNED ON RIDING BELLE DOWN TO THE CAMPGROUND TO tell a few tales tonight, but an hour after he’d taken his frustrations out on the trespassing Apostles, Marie had jumped back into his mind and stubbornly stayed there.

  Belle paused at the end of the ranch road, waiting for Tom to signal the direction: down to the campground, or up to Marie’s. He considered, and decided that Marie would probably do a lot of glaring and not much talking, even if he tried to apologize. “Guess we’ll go tell stories, Belle.”

  They turned right on Old Madelyn Highway. It was getting dark fast tonight, no doubt because of the bank of clouds building behind the Madelyn Mountains. Thunder rolled more frequently now, and the lightning flashes were closer.

  “We’ll have to get back nice and early tonight, girl, or we might get ourselves drenched.”

  The horse nickered softly, then her ears went back as two rifle shots rent the air.

  “Whoa.” The shots came from the north, and Tom wheeled Belle around on the road, then waited, listening. A clap of thunder shook the valley, then two more shots rang out. Then nothing but silence.

  “Maybe we’d better go see Marie after all.” Tom flipped the reins and Belle took off at a near gallop. Lord, how that horse loved to run. There was no traffic on the highway, so he let her have her head, and within fifteen minutes, they arrived at the short road—a long driveway, really—that led to Marie’s. Her modest ranch consisted of a small stable and barn, one corral, and a single-wide mobile
home. As they turned up the dirt drive, Tom saw that the trailer was dark, though her pickup was in the driveway. Dorsey and Wild Bill started barking from somewhere around the stable.

  Behind the trailer, he dismounted and led Belle to the watering trough inside the corral, leaving her happily drinking while he walked over to the stable. It was secured, but Marie had given him a copy of the padlock key, so he quickly took care of that. As he entered, he called out to the two dogs and the warning barks turned into ones of greeting. Letting himself inside, he petted the collies, then walked with them past the stalls. Marie’s sheep, for the most part, were friendly: They were for wool, not meat, and nearly all the idiotic little critters came to see if he had something to eat.

  At the far end of the stable, Rex’s stall was empty, as he’d expected when he saw the truck and the lack of lights.

  “So, boys, where’d your mistress get off to?” The dogs wagged and panted, but didn’t tell him a thing.

  Relocking the stable, he walked up the steps to the trailer’s back door and tried it. Locked.

  “Marie?” he called. “Marie? You home?”

  Receiving no answer, he went down the steps and walked around to the little front porch, where he seated himself on a wooden glider. Marie wouldn’t be long, he thought, since the sheep hadn’t had their evening feed. He’d wait a few minutes.

  Marie kept her place nice. She had honeysuckle growing up the crisscrossed redwood patio enclosure and a few pots of geraniums and brilliant orange poppies along the edges of the redbrick ground cover.

  Rocking gently, Tom stared out at the Madelyn Mountains. Even this close, he could see the tops of the storm clouds rising up above the craggy peaks and plateau of Olive Mesa. Thunder drummed once more, and this time he could feel it vibrate against his feet. The storm seemed to be moving slow, but it could speed up and arrive in the next hour or two. Between the gunfire and the approaching storm, his hackles were up, and he shivered. “Marie,” he said softly, “you’re a confounded woman and I hope you come home soon.”

  76

  Marie Lopez

  THUNDER BOOMED, AND MARIE LOPEZ NERVOUSLY GLANCED UP at the twilight sky. She’d gotten a late start back into the canyon because she’d decided she should stable her sheep instead of leaving them out where God-knew-what might happen to them. Then she had to drive into town for a roll of high-exposure film. Now, with the remaining sunlight exiled by the ring of mountains, it was nearly full dark in Rattlesnake Canyon, but at least there was enough moonlight to let her see the pale form of the nearest sheep.

  Thunder clapped as she drew near, and Rex shied, giving a small distressed whinny.

  “What’s the matter, boy?” He was long over his fear of loud noises, never flinching even when she stood right next to him and fired her rifle, and this behavior seemed odd. Tom always said that your horse could hear and see a lot more than you, and only a fool didn’t pay attention—damn you, Abernathy!—and he was right. She urged the horse forward, but he took two steps and stopped again. “Okay. We’ll do it your way,” she murmured, pulling her rifle free. Turning Rex, she scanned the canyon and the ridges but saw nothing unusual. “Come on,” she told the horse, but again he wouldn’t approach the dead sheep.

  “Okay.” She dismounted and walked up to the animal’s corpse, then laid the rifle down and pulled a small flashlight from her jacket pocket. It was hard not to flinch. The ewe lay stiff-legged on its side, and the flesh was gone from the face and the upper portion of the throat, revealing gleaming bone. The tongue was removed, and lower, the abdomen had been dissected, though only a few drops of blood were visible. Instead, the strange blue gel dotted the wool, the viscera, and the ground.

  Shaking her head sadly, wondering who or what would mutilate an animal like this, she picked up the rifle and walked back to Rex. She tried to lead him toward the sheep, but he stalled out after four paces. He’d balked with the mutilations as well, but at the time she assumed he smelled mountain lion. Turning, she stroked his muzzle, then opened a saddlebag and extracted her camera, a pair of latex gloves, a skinning knife, and the Ziploc bags, then returned to the corpse and positioned the flashlight’s beam on it.

  She took a whole roll of 1600 ASA film, then donned the gloves and kneeled, belatedly wishing she’d remembered to bring an old spoon or something so she wouldn’t have to touch the gel, even through gloves. Oh well. Opening the bags, she tried not to cringe as she scooped a blob of gel with two fingers. It was ice-cold, even through the latex.

  Next she used the knife to cut out a piece of flesh that contained a bloodless incision. She put that in another bag, then nervously decided that was enough and dropped the soiled gloves in the third bag, and her knife in the fourth, then packed it all in the saddlebags.

  She looked at Rex. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to carry the sheep up to Alex, would you?”

  He stamped his foot as if he understood her.

  “I didn’t think so.” She swung into the saddle and began crossing the valley at a slow pace so Rex wouldn’t trip. She urged him toward the other sheep—she just wanted to make sure it had met the same fate—but after a clap of thunder—closer now—she heard the distant roar of something in the sky. Helicopters.

  “Come on, Rex,” she urged, glancing up. The choppers hadn’t come into view yet. The horse moved faster as she turned him in the direction of her campsite of two nights ago. They made the edge of the valley and quickly found the trail up to the huge overhang, with its camouflaging sage and mesquite bushes.

  To get Rex beneath it, she had to dismount and bribe him with apples she’d brought along for that purpose. He was underneath, reasonably well hidden, by the time the roar reached the canyon.

  Three helicopters, dark except for their running lights, appeared over the ridge. An instant later floodlights lit up the valley floor, playing over the dirt and rocks and Joshua trees.

  “Good thing you’re a black horse,” Marie whispered when a light flashed near their hiding place.

  A moment later, the dark choppers located what they wanted: the sheep. While one hovered above, the two other craft slowly descended, one landing on each side of the round valley. The blades kept whirring and Marie squinted to see the dark-clothed men, two from each vehicle, race to each sheep. Less than a minute later, both teams returned to the choppers carrying heavy bags between them—the sheep.

  “We’ll get out of here soon, Rex,” she said as the men disappeared into the helicopters.

  The choppers’ blades picked up speed and they moved up into the air like giant locusts. One spotlight swept the ground again, and Marie was concerned when she saw that two men were still on the ground. The last chopper swooped and turned, then the men blended with the darkness.

  Finally one of them turned on a flashlight. They were evidently searching the valley, and Lord, they might be down there all night. Marie reached up and scratched Rex behind the ears. “We might be here awhile after all.”

  77

  Justin Martin

  THE STUPID KID HAD GONE AND DIED ON HIM, AND JUSTIN MARTIN wasn’t what you’d call a happy camper as he drove out of New Madelyn and up Old Madelyn Highway.

  Every Friday night dear old Mom and Dad drove into Barstow to catch the twilight matinee at the movies, and he’d counted on them being gone when he arrived home with his trunkful of goodies. But no, for the first time ever, they were running late, and he didn’t realize it until his mother came out of the house just as he opened his trunk.

  He was so wrapped up in his own business that she would have seen the kid if she hadn’t alerted him by calling out, “Justin, honey, can you move your car out of the driveway so your father can pull the Buick out of the garage?”

  He’d slammed the lid down, squashing the tip of his thumb. “Sure, Mom,” he yelled, having a hell of a time sounding pleasant. But he did, and ten minutes later, the old farts were gone, and he’d backed the Mustang in the garage so that he could easily carry the kid and the bik
e through the back door and into the toolshed.

  As soon as he was safely in the garage, door closed, he’d reopened the trunk, and realized that the kid was as dead as dead could be. In fact, he’d started to stiffen, and Justin had a bitch of a time trying to disentangle the boy’s fingers from the bicycle spokes. Before he’d died, despite the taped wrists, he’d managed to latch on to one wheel.

  Justin ended up breaking the fingers loose. They made an interesting snap, crackle, pop sound. Carefully he lifted the bike out, then opened the garage’s back door. And that’s when he found out that the neighbors were all outside. On one side of the chain link, Old Lady Quigley was out picking up dog shit with a paper towel and dropping it in a grocery sack. Her cocker spaniel stayed with her every step of the way, eagerly checking out each pile before she picked it up. He wondered if Quigley ever sniffed her fingers when she finished her shit-picking.

  On the other side of the yard, the Egyptians—he’d never bothered to learn their names—were out. As usual, the old man was reclining in his chaise longue, beer in hand, barking orders to his kid and his ever silent wife to make the perfect yard more perfect, now. Finally, directly behind Justin’s house, the Candy Asses were out in force. Dad was barbecuing, Mom was setting the picnic table, and the noisy little shit-kids were splashing around in the shallow end of their pool. None of the assholes were paying attention to the thunderclaps, and Justin didn’t have time to waste waiting for the storm to arrive. “Shit,” was all he said before he grabbed a shovel and returned to his car.

  Now, as he turned on the dirt highway, his hands encased in gloves, the kid and its bike were still in his trunk. He’d thrown a short-handled shovel in, to boot. He had too much to do tonight to spend much time finding a good dumping spot. He needed to take some skin, bury the kid and the bike, see Christie if she was working, leave a gift for the Peeler, and if at all possible, do something about that key thief, Eric Watson. It was a tall order, especially since the storm was no more than an hour or two away.