“You can always crash at my place. My roommates already left for the semester. Got the whole place to myself.”
She smiled and let her eyes peek at Samuel’s lap. She let the look linger.
“Certainly don’t want you to be all alone now, do we?”
Samuel looked around the bar at the survivors. The underclassman and underage kids had binged through the early evening hours and had already been escorted home or put into a cab. The shot and beer regulars had not returned yet, although once spring bled into summer, they would come to reclaim their neighborhood bar, at least until dorm move-in day in August. For now, Samuel felt like the bar was his, and the people finishing their drinks in it belonged to him as well. He had taken the remainder of his finals yesterday and printed out the last history paper in the university computer lab that morning. Samuel’s parents wouldn’t be expecting him home for another week, and it would be a week after that before he’d be back on the assembly line at the factory, making enough money in the summer to pay for his books in the fall.
Pride motivated Samuel more than the promise of a good job or the adulation of his family, who marveled at him as he became the first to steer toward a college degree. In fact, Samuel believed most material possessions owned him. He had a car, a beauty of Detroit engineering. Samuel loved his 1988 Dodge Daytona, but he still had a year of payments left on it. He belonged to that car, or more accurately, to the bank that owned it. He spent long hours at the circulation desk. The countless stupid questions and disparaging glances from blue-haired librarians felt like a chain tethering him to a world he knew he was inevitably entering. The position came with a stipend, which, to Samuel, was another way of getting owned. He savored the few moments in his life when he felt truly liberated, and this night was going to be the first in a string of six or seven that would belong to him and him only.
“No, you don’t. I’m afraid of the dark, so maybe you could come into my room, tuck me in.”
The girl smiled, which precipitated a burp, which turned into a full revolution ignited by the acidic burn in her stomach. She turned in time to project the vomit over the bar and onto the webbed plastic mat that kept the bartenders from slipping on the wet floor. She coughed and spattered like an old truck, and Samuel could do nothing but stare at the skin horizon that appeared under her shirt and above her shorts when she leaned forward on the stool. He studied the smooth, white skin, turning his head sideways. Samuel was glad she did not ruin that space with a tramp stamp, like most of the girls at college did. He knew the ’90s were just the beginning for tattoos, and he really liked the hot biker-chick look. But on this lady, he was hoping to slide in behind her and enjoy the unobstructed view of the beads of sweat that would collect in the small of her back. He imagined her long, blonde hair splayed out and falling down over the sides of her breasts. He would grab her hips and hold on for as long as the ride lasted.
“Get her out,” said the bartender while unfurling countless paper towels off a roll and dropping them to cover the puke. “And I had better see that piece-of-shit car of yours on the street in the morning.”
The remark and ensuing odor of sickness snapped Samuel out of his fantasy. He noticed that he had been rubbing her back while she vomited, and his fingers had moved further south until they caressed the waistband of her hip-hugger jeans.
Samuel blinked, returning him back to the present and his mental prison cell. He took shallow breaths, knowing the memory was not finished. He thought of Mara, wondering if she was being forced to relive a time from her past, the reopening of wounds that had never quite closed.
He felt the warm, penetrating feel of her tongue in his mouth. Samuel pulled her closer with two hands on her hips. The alcohol killed the taste of vomit on her lips, but did not protect his nose from the odor of summer trash coming from the dumpsters in the alley.
“Right here. I want you right here.”
Samuel put his hands on her breasts and pushed them up, feeling the stiffness of her nipples through the thin T-shirt. He looked into her eyes and saw the hazy glaze of 3:00 a.m. in them. The woman’s head moved in stuttering motions as Samuel fought a losing war against the vodka shots.
“I have a queen-size bed in my room. We can do all kinds of stuff on that.”
She grinned and slid her hand inside his jeans. Samuel moaned, tilting his head back against the wall until more loose mortar rained down on them.
“Get a fucking room!”
Samuel and the woman looked down the alley at the opened steel door at the back of Joey’s Grill. A short-order cook with a soiled apron and a cigarette dangling from his lips emptied a garbage pail into the dumpster with a wet smack.
“Get out ‘fore I call the cops, or worse yet, ‘fore Slimy Larry comes back to his cardboard house and stabs you both in the gut.”
Samuel giggled, and the woman slid both hands around his waist.
“I can’t walk no more,” said the woman.
“I think I’m parked around the corner, at a meter.”
She stepped back, lifting her head off his chest. She drew an index finger down over her bottom lip, smirking at Samuel before waving it at him. “Naughty boy. Gonna have to punish ya.”
“The house is only a few blocks. I’ll be fine. No faster than twenty-five, I promise.”
The cook shook his head. He flicked his cigarette into the dumpster while stepping through the steel door, pulling it shut with a sound of metal on metal that echoed through the alley.
“‘Kay,” the woman said, “but hurry.”
Samuel led her from the alley to the sidewalk. A few lonely souls skulked by, caught in drunken limbo. The bars had made last call, and the breakfast restaurants hadn’t opened yet. He glanced to his right and watched the neon sign of the bar flicker into cold darkness. He turned in the other direction and stared until he saw the taillights of his Dodge, the twenty-inch tires snuggling up to the curb.
He had done this before. Many times. Samuel knew the drill, knew his limitations like every good drunk. He would ease into the street, stay slow, and keep to the residential streets. Avoid traffic, and that would allow him to reach home safely. Intellectually, Samuel understood the risks he was taking, but the young college girl pawing at him skewed all of the statistics. He would return to his room and they would explore each other like first-time lovers do. It was the aroma that drove him mad. Samuel could smell her.
“Lezzgo, silly,” she murmured, placing a hand in his lap.
Samuel shook his thoughts loose and put the key in the ignition. Fear slid across his face until he realized it was the wrong key. After four more tries, Samuel discovered the ignition key and started the car. The Dodge came alive with a throaty rumble after he pushed the clutch to the floor and pumped the accelerator three times. Pearl Jam’s “Oceans” came through the speaker system, and the woman fumbled for the volume knob, turning it until Samuel felt like Eddie Vedder was singing to them from the backseat.
“Album of the year,” she murmured.
“This is killer. Not sure how Pearl Jam is going to top this record.”
Samuel fastened his seatbelt and looked over both shoulders before easing into the empty street. His body took over as if the effects of the alcohol, the slurred speech and the slowed reflexes, had subsided. He looked at the girl and pointed to her seatbelt. Samuel wanted to see the way the nylon restraint would run between her breasts, accentuating her curves.
“I trust you,” she said. The woman closed her eyes and leaned back against the headrest.
Samuel put the Dodge in first gear and eased from the curb. The parking meter stared at them as they drove past, its cyclopean eye red and menacing. He coasted underneath the first traffic light, which blinked yellow in the pre-dawn darkness of Fifth Avenue, the main strip dissecting the quaint college town. The next set of lights swung in the gentle summer breeze, red.
“Wazzup with these?” he asked.
The girl just mumbled.
Samuel w
aited and looked back and forth, wondering why the second intersection’s lights had not gone to blinking yellow, and more importantly, why they were red in his direction. Before he could contemplate the answer, a dagger of light pierced his rearview mirror, and by the time Samuel reached to flip his mirror to the nightshade angle, the vehicle was beside his.
The chrome side mirror captured the reflection from the copper street lights in a way that made it look alien. But it was the 1977 Chevy Corvette attached to the mirror that made Samuel forget about the sexual tryst he had in the works. The tinted windows and T-tops made him think that the vehicle had to be from California. They did not have the need or the legislation to make that happen out here. Chrome side pips ran from the back of the front tires underneath the door until they flared out at the rear. The black paint job glistened as if the car were wet. The ‘Vette slowed at the intersection until four inches separated the passenger-side window from Samuel’s. He waited as the window came down with the slow lurch of a handle turn.
“Dodge,” said the voice from inside the Corvette.
Samuel paused and looked over at the girl. She smiled and then winked at him.
“Ain’t even close. You got sixteen pistons under that hood. Over three hundred horses. Go pick on someone your own size.” A voice came from inside the Corvette, hidden in the blackness. “No balls. I get it.”
Samuel gripped the leather covering on his steering wheel.
“I can handle the lady too, seeing as how you ain’t got what it takes to satisfy her.”
Samuel looked at the light and back at the empty void of the Corvette’s window. He nodded and turned his attention back to the dangling traffic light, anticipating the turn to green. He set his left hand on top of the steering wheel and dropped the right on the gear shift set between the seats. He revved the engine a few times and used his left foot to push back into the seat. Samuel took his right foot off the brake and teased the clutch with his left until he felt the gears of the manual transmission edging forward, pleading to open up into a full gallop.
When the light turned green, Samuel slammed the accelerator to the floor and popped the clutch with his left foot. The Dodge lurched forward, and he heard a giggle from the woman sitting next to him. The engine drowned out the passionate wailing of Eddie Vedder as the CD player moved on to play “Release.” The rear tires of the Dodge screamed, and the acrid, bitter smoke of burning rubber reached his nose as the Dodge pulled him underneath the traffic light and down the right side of the street, now serving as a drag strip.
The Corvette appeared to hover next to Samuel’s car, teasing and taunting him like an angry sibling. It stayed locked in position, using the oncoming lane as its own. Samuel heard laughing coming from the passenger-side window until it ran back up, drenching the Corvette in complete, inky blackness.
Samuel glanced at his gauges, the needle pushing toward sixty. The blinking yellow lights at the intersections faded like fireflies in the summer night. He tried not to think about the people on the sidewalks witnessing the race. Samuel loved this college town. They knew him here. They knew his car.
The Corvette roared, and Samuel saw the black sports car lurch forward. He smiled and shook his head, frustrated by the driver’s decision to toy with him and, at the same time, impressed by the sheer brutality of the Chevy’s 305 block. He feathered the clutch to bring the RPM gauge back into the red before shifting gears. Samuel’s blonde cohort smiled while holding the seatbelt across her chest.
Samuel watched the taillights of the Corvette move forward as his own speedometer broke the century mark. The two cars rocketed down the sleepy street like two bullets from a gun.
When the Corvette jacked low and dipped a shoulder into the highway onramp, Samuel realized he had to concede. He knew the Daytona did not have the handling of the Corvette, and he pulled the car to the curb, feeling the effects of the alcohol replacing the adrenaline of the race. He picked up the woman’s purse and searched through her wallet until he found her ID, complete with home address. Samuel glanced at the woman and he turned the car around. He drove toward her apartment, where he would most likely need help to take her safely inside.
The race left him dizzy as its effects receded in much the same way that the alcohol had hours earlier. Samuel would have to lick his wounded pride and forego the physical satisfaction of a sexual conquest. He found no solace in doing the right thing.
He felt her hand in his, tiny and vulnerable. She squeezed to let him know she was still there. The room came back into focus, and he recognized the same indistinguishable furniture that had been in the other cabins. Samuel’s breath hitched in his chest. He stood in the middle of the room with Mara at his side.
“Did you see it?” he asked her.
She nodded and wiped a tear from her face.
“I should have learned from that. It was so close to being a catastrophe.”
Mara turned and trailed a finger down his cheek. “We all fall short. We all screw up.”
Samuel brushed her hand aside and walked to the window. Blackened film covered the windowpanes as it had all of the cabin windows in this locality. He tried seeing out of one, hiding the rest of his tears from her.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“Another cabin. Probably a little further down the path, but not too far from the Barren.”
The moments preceding his visceral memory flooded Samuel’s head. He recalled the shuffling horde of the undead and the distant but closing sound of the pack howling at the dead sky.
“Major and Kole. What do they want?”
“Not sure,” Mara said, shaking her head. “I think Kole wants to inflict pain, and he doesn’t care who he hurts. But Major, yeah, Major wants something more.”
“More than what?”
“More than hurting you. He wants out of here. We all do.”
***
Kole and Major ambled along the path, weaving in and out between the creatures. They seemed to have no purpose other than following Samuel and Mara. Major expected to be blown back by their rotten filth, but the sense of smell had all but disappeared in the locality. Along with the loss of sound, he knew the Reversion was almost complete.
“Can we get to them?” Kole asked. He hobbled forward, each couple of steps causing him to wince in pain.
“Yep,” replied Major. “The walking corpses will keep ’em pinned down. Won’t hurt ’em none.”
Kole nodded and kept walking, occasionally sidestepping a group of the creatures. He passed one on his left, looking deep into its face. Kole shuddered when the creature turned its blank eyes on him. He felt the desperation there, the pain.
“Think the next cabin is over that ridge,” Major said, shaking Kole from his thoughts. Major pointed along the path in the direction the horde was traveling. A throaty howl broke through the silence and made the horde stop in their tracks. Major and Kole turned to face the alpha male striding along the path, the wolf’s eyes never leaving the staggering undead.
Chapter 13
You stole my prey, and now you must make recompense.
Major stopped and looked at the alpha male. “I protected my investment.”
Kole looked at Major and then back at the wolf. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he asked.
The old man brushed off the question with a wave of his hand.
Where is he?
“Up the trail. The horde follows, like you.”
The alpha male stopped five feet in front of the men. The other hunters in the pack flanked him on each side until they stood blocking the path. The horde froze in place, swaying in the imaginary breeze.
He has the girl?
“She’s with him. I’m not sure who has what.”
Kole stepped up to stand beside Major. “Are you talking to these coyotes?” he asked.
“Wolves.”
“Whatever. Can you really understand them?”
Our pact involved you and you only.
“I k
now,” Major replied, looking at Kole. “I know.”
“What, man?” Kole asked. “What do you know?” He shuffled on his feet, clenching his fists and looking back and forth between the wolves and Major.
We’ll still hunt the man in order to fulfill His command, but we also want recompense for the delay. The girl.
“I don’t give a fuck about her.”
Then it isn’t genuine, is it? We’ll take him, too.
Major felt the alpha male’s mental nod toward Kole. “He is not mine.”
“Hey, hold up. What the hell are you talking about?” asked Kole.
Major turned to look at Kole, his eyes hard, dark, determined. “It’s out of my control,” he said.
“What is?” Kole asked while the alpha male padded forward.
The rest of the pack circled the two men while the horde remained fixed. Kole looked at Major and then at the wolves, understanding seeping into his mind like water running over a dam.
“You can’t do this!” he screamed at Major.
The old man shrugged and took a step back as the alpha male emitted a low growl, ears up and eyes fixed on Kole.
“This is not my doing. I’m a subject of this locality, like you. I wouldn’t worry about it. The Reversion is going to swallow us all soon, anyway.”
Kole gave Major a menacing look before tossing his bloodied bandages to the ground. A few of the hunters snuck forward and sniffed the blood as if it were an aphrodisiac.
“In a world losing all sensory input, you throw hungry wolves a handful of bloody bandages.”
Before Kole could reply, the alpha male sprang forward. His lean body flew through the air toward Kole’s neck. Kole raised a forearm, striking the alpha male on the head, deflecting his lunge with a whimper. The other hunters stepped forward.
No! He is mine.
“They want to prove themselves, the way you did. They want to fight their way to the top of the pack.”
“Stop talking to them, you asshole,” said Kole, spitting each syllable into the silent, still air.
The Ultimate Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Bestsellers) Page 40
