by Rick Hautala
“We’re going to suffocate if we stay in here.” He pushed the door open and the full heat of the desert slammed him. A curtain of yellow dust hung in the air limiting his vision to a few yards in any direction. He made a tunnel of his hands and peered into the haze. “Now where the hell is the highway?”
Laura got out on her side and came around the car to join him.
“I can’t see anything,” she said.
“It’s got to be right here. I didn’t drive that far.”
He walked to the back of the car and peered in the other direction. “Hey.”
“What is it?” Laura said.
“Looks like headlights.”
Laura walked back and followed his gaze. Through the curtain of dust a pair of lights could be dimly seen. The lights bounced as they drew nearer, and the stranded couple could hear the grumble of an engine.
“It is headlights. Somebody’s coming.” They both stood behind the Chevy in the path of the oncoming lights and waved their arms.
The approaching car ground to a stop a few feet in front of them. It was an old, very old Ford. It was impossible to tell what the original color had been, so rusted and scraped was the finish. Harry figured it was pre-World War II. You don’t see many of those relics driving around, but Harry was damn glad to see this one. He walked to the driver’s side window and leaned down. The glass was too caked with dirt to see through. He rapped with one knuckle.
“Hello…hi, there.”
No response.
“Hey! We need some help here.”
The window creaked down about two inches. Harry could make out a pale oval in the darkness of the interior.
“I got off the Interstate when the sandstorm started, now I can’t even see the damn road.”
Squinting through the opening Harry saw the driver was a long, angular man in a wrinkled khaki jacket. He leaned away and opened the passenger side door.
Harry looked at his wife. “I guess he wants us to get in.”
Laura spoke quietly. “I don’t feel good about this.”
“I don’t think there’s any choice.” Harry led her around to the other side of the car. The door was open about six inches. It creaked angrily as he pulled it the rest of the way. A pale hand pushed the ragged seat forward toward the dash. All that could be seen of the driver was a long jaw with stubble like fungus. He wore a battered black fedora and a stained black pants.
With a last look at his wife, Harry climbed into the backseat. Laura followed.
They nearly gagged at the smell. The inside of this car had not been cleaned in a long time. It stank of grease and old meat and worse things. The couple settled uneasily on the torn upholstery.
“If you could just get us to the highway,” Harry said. “And if you have a phone I can call Triple-A.”
The driver jammed the Ford into low gear and turned right.
“Isn’t the Interstate in the other direction?” Harry said.
“No.” It was the first word the driver had spoken. His voice rasped like sandpaper on bricks.
The couple in the backseat exchanged a look. Their Impala quickly disappeared in the murk as the Ford made surprisingly good headway over the rough ground.
Harry leaned forward. His nostrils tightened at the rot smell. “We appreciate the ride, but…where are we going?”
“The town,” rasped the driver.
“What town is that?”
“The town,” he said again, as if that settled things.
Laura leaned close to her husband and whispered, “Harry, I don’t like this.”
Harry shook his head and spoke again to the driver. “Listen, we need to get to a phone. Our car’s back there and needs a tow.” When there was no answer he added, “We can pay.”
The driver made a soft growling sound, but otherwise gave no sign he had heard. Harry turned to his wife and held out his hands in a pantomime of helplessness. They sat back silently and waited.
The pall of dust continued to hang in the air outside. The visible landscape was brown and barren. The outline of a narrow, rutted road was visible through the windshield. It was sure as hell not the Interstate.
Harry tried for an authoritative tone. “Where is this town you’re talking about?”
As he spoke a battered metal sign on a bent pole appeared through the haze. The black letters were faded to illegibility. All Harry could make out was:
COME TO
REIGH
A wooden building swam into view on the right. Gray and weathered, it leaned to one side like a dying mastodon. There was another across the street. A gas station. No, more like what they used to call service stations. Two ancient pumps stood askew under a canopy. Faded lettering on the overhang read Richfield. Jesus, how many years had it been since Richfield Oil vanished into ARCO? There were other buildings, maybe a dozen. All were in a drunken state of disrepair. None of them showed signs of life.
“What is this, some kind of ghost town?”
The driver did not reply. He pulled to the side of the dusty street in front of a building larger than the others but in a similar state of decay. The Ford’s engine coughed and died. The driver rolled down the passenger side window and pointed through it toward the large building.
“You want us go in there?”
The bony finger jabbed emphatically.
“What is it? Is there somebody there? Is there a phone?”
“Go.”
Harry looked at his wife. “I guess we go.” He pushed the seat forward and reached up to open the door. He gestured for Laura to get out.
“What is this? I don’t like it,” she said.
“Neither do I, but we don’t have a lot of options. Maybe there’s a phone inside.”
Gingerly Harry led the way up from the dirt street to the crumbling sidewalk and through a door supported on one hinge. It was a large room with a stairway at the far end. Dusty furniture was spaced around the room in an apparent pattern. Yellowed padding showed through the torn upholstery like sick intestines. A sagging counter with a rack of pigeonholes on the wall showing a few key tabs identified this as a hotel. Or what had once been a hotel. No telephone was in sight.
Harry walked to the counter, leaned over to look down, saw only dirt and scattered papers yellowed with age. He straightened and turned toward the staircase. “Hey! Anybody here? Hello!”
From the gloom at the top of the stairs the figure of a man emerged. He wore a black suit with a vest and a tie that had long ago lost its color. His gait was awkward and disjointed as he reached the main floor and shambled behind the counter. He turned to the pigeonholes without looking at Harry and Laura.
“Can you help us here?” Harry said with some impatience.
No answer as the man studied the hanging key tabs.
“Is there a telephone we can use?”
The man selected a key and dropped it on the counter.
“No, we don’t want a room. We need a telephone. Our car broke down and I need to call for a tow.”
“No phone. Out of order.” The man’s voice was a hoarse whisper. He slapped the counter with a heavy-veined hand and pushed the key toward Harry. With his free hand he pointed toward the stairway. “Second floor.”
“I told you we don’t want a room. What the hell is going on here?”
Laura touched her husband’s arm. “Don’t argue with him. Maybe he means the phone is upstairs.”
Harry looked down at the key tab. The number was 206. “This better not be some kind of a reality TV show.”
The unsmiling clerk looked at him from deeply shadowed eyes. He pointed again to the stairs.
“All right.” Harry snatched up the key. “But this foolishness had better stop or somebody around here is going to get sued. Big time.”
He led the way carefully up the dirty and uneven staircase to the second floor. The hallway was narrow, floorboards creaked under the worn carpet. Some of the room doors gaped open, others hung drunkenly on their hinges. As far
as Harry could tell, none of the rooms were occupied. No one walked the hall. The smell was ancient cigar smoke, urine, dust, and rot.
“Not quite five star,” he said, trying a smile.
Laura did not return the smile. “I want to get away from here.”
“If you have a suggestion, let’s hear it.”
She sucked in her lower lip and looked as though she might cry. Harry put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her against him.
“It’ll be all right, babe. We’ll put up with this while we have to, then we’ll get the hell out and laugh all the way home.”
She did not look convinced.
He found a door that seemed to be intact with a tarnished metal 206 screwed to the panel. He tried the knob and found it locked. The key grated and scraped and finally caught and rolled back the bolt. The hinges croaked as he pulled the door open.
The room was no better than he expected. A sagging bed was covered with a stained brown blanket. A cracked mirror hung over a bureau scalloped with cigarette burns. There was one table, one chair, one standing lamp, none of which would have been accepted by the Salvation Army. A dusty window overlooked the street below. No telephone.
“Harry, what have we got into?”
Distracted, he shook his head and crossed the threadbare rug to the window. He rubbed a patch of the pane free of grime and looked out. Through the curtain of dust that still hung in the air he saw a small silent group of people gathering down in front of the hotel. There were a couple of women and eight or ten men. Their clothes were all wrong. They hung awkwardly on the bodies. The style was from another decade. The people had a uniformly unhealthy look and moved with a shambling gait, arms hanging loose at their sides. While he could not see their faces clearly, there was a cold, deadly menace about them.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he said.
“That’s what I’ve been saying. There must be a working telephone somewhere.”
Harry crossed to the door, grabbed the knob and swore as the door refused to budge. He pulled with no effect then pushed again, harder. He banged on the panel with his fist. He kicked at the wooden base.
“We’re locked in.”
“You have the key.”
“There’s no keyhole on this side.”
“Harry, I’m scared.”
“That does not help,” he said, spacing his words.
“Who are these people? What do they want with us?”
“God knows. But I don’t think it’s good.”
Laura chewed her lip and looked as though she might cry.
Harry patted her shoulder awkwardly. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but we’ll get out of it somehow.”
He returned to the window. The menacing group waited in the street below. Pale faces were turned up toward the second floor window. The eyes were pinpoints of reflected light in shadowed hollows. He went back to the door and put his shoulder to the wood. Something clicked. He grasped the knob. It turned in his hand. The door opened suddenly outward and Harry almost fell into two men who stood outside. One was their cadaverous driver, the other shorter and broader but just as pale and ragged.
“Come,” the driver rasped.
“Like hell.” Harry started to turn back toward his wife who cowered near the bed.
The men moved with surprising swiftness. Each took hold of one of his arms. They began to pull him into the hall. Harry yanked one arm free from the shorter man and swung a blow at the driver. His fist smacked the man’s shoulder with a pulpy sound. A puff of dust rose from his coat. He showed no reaction to being hit. Harry swung again, hitting the side of the driver’s face. The cheekbone cracked and caved in. Neither man showed a sign of pain, but the grip on Harry’s other arm loosened enough for him to pull free.
A third man pushed past the struggling group in the doorway and went for Laura. Harry ripped away from the two men pawing at him and rushed toward his wife. He smashed his fist into the back of the man’s head as he reached for Laura. It was like hitting a rotten pumpkin. Dark syrupy liquid oozed out. Harry seized his wife’s arm and pulled her toward the door. The man who had been their driver blocked the path. Harry slammed him into the wall. Bones cracked under the dusty clothes.
In the hall the couple started toward the stairs but stopped as the heads of four, six, more of the weird silent people appeared, coming up for them. Harry spun and steered Laura back in the other direction.
“Run!”
Laura snapped out of her shock and they ran in the hallway, away from the approaching figures. The three men from the room stumbled out to block them, two with broken heads, the third with one arm dangling. With Laura tucked in behind him Harry lowered his shoulder and blasted through the trio like a pulling guard leading the way for a running back.
They pounded to the far end of the hall. A blank plaster wall stopped them. No back stairs. Harry swore and turned back to see the hallway filled with the shambling figures coming toward them. He grabbed the knob on the nearest intact door and pulled. It did not budge.
“Shit!”
The advancing figures were just half a hall length away. They had proved not too sturdy when he hit the three in the room, but the sheer numbers could overwhelm him and Laura quickly. With no options left, Harry took a fighting stance, awaiting their attack.
A door on the opposite side of the hall opened suddenly. A man’s head appeared and whispered hoarsely, “This way.”
He looked younger than the oncoming mob, and his clothes were better. After a moment’s hesitation, Harry took his wife’s arm and brushed past the young man into the room. The door closed behind them. A lock clicked. Harry started to speak but the young man put a finger to his lips.
Something shuffled and bumped softly against the door. Muffled voices muttered. Laura gasped.
“Don’t worry, they can’t get in here,” the young man whispered.
Harry waited several minutes until the shuffling and mumbling in the hall faded. Then he said, “I think they’ve gone. Is there another way out?”
“Yes. I can show you.”
“Who are you, anyway?”
“My name is Quilty. We’ll have time for introductions later.”
“I didn’t see another way out.”
“Trust me, I know how to get out of here.”
“Let’s go then.”
“Only one of you at a time. There’s a passage but it’s too narrow for all of us.”
“I don’t see how—”
“It’s the only way.” The urgency in the young man’s voice stilled Harry’s doubts. “Who’s coming first.”
“You go, Laura.”
She looked at Harry and shook her head slightly.
“Go ahead,” he told her. “I’ll be right behind you.” And to Quilty, “Won’t I?”
“Sure. Come on, lady, we have to move fast.”
Quilty opened the door carefully and put his head out. He looked both ways and said over his shoulder, “All clear. Let’s go.”
He took Laura’s arm, and with a last worried look at her husband, she let the young man lead her out into the hall. The door closed softly behind them.
Harry paced the floor. He rubbed away the dust on the window pane. This one looked out on the drab backs of the weathered buildings and the weed grown patch that separated them from the desert. Then he began to think.
What was this secret passageway all about? Why had he not seen it? And what about it being so narrow only one of them could go at a time. The moment had been so stressful he had not been thinking logically. Who the hell was this Quilty? Where did he come from? Why should he trust the man?
Suddenly chilled, Harry pushed open the door and stepped into the hall. Nobody was in sight. And no passageway, narrow or otherwise. But the door of the room across the hall was now slightly ajar. He knew he had tried that door when they were running from the mob but had been unable to move it.
He stepped across the hall, pushed the door fully open and
froze. Laura was half-lying on the bed with her blouse torn away. Quilty was leaning over her.
“What the hell?!” Harry blurted.
Quilty looked up and it was immediately clear that this was not a sexual attack. Blood spilled over his lower lip, down his chin, and dripped onto Laura’s exposed bra. She made a whimpering sound and held out a hand toward her husband.
Never really a man of action, something exploded in Harry’s head. He sprang across the space between them, seized Quilty by the shirt front and threw him to the floor. Blinded by rage, he battered the young man’s face with his fists again, and again, and again. Flesh shredded and bones splintered under his hammering. Broken teeth ripped the skin on Harry’s knuckles. Still he kept on hitting and hitting, until he became aware of Laura’s hand on his shoulder.
She knelt behind him. “Stop it, Harry. I think you’ve killed him.”
Harry stared down at the ruined face of the young man. “I wanted to hurt him, but…”
“Look at your poor hands.” Laura ripped away the loose flap of her blouse and used it to blot the blood from his knuckles. Gently she kissed his wounds. “You were very brave.”
For the first time he looked at his wife and winced at the raw wound in the flesh between her neck and the point of her shoulder.
“Jesus, what did that bastard do to you?”
“Never mind. It’ll be all right.”
Harry looked around for something to use as a bandage. He rejected the soiled bedclothes and ripped off his own shirt. It was damp with sweat but better than nothing. He pressed it on the wound and felt the warmth of her raw flesh. “Can you hold that in place?”
She nodded.
“We have to get away from here. Now.” He stood shakily and helped Laura to her feet. Cautiously he opened the door to the hall and looked toward the stairway. “Nobody’s there now. Can you make it?”
She nodded again, giving him an off-center smile.
He walked the length of the hallway, checking on all sides. As he suspected, there was no hidden passage. At the stairway he descended several steps and scanned the lobby. No one visible there either. He beckoned Laura to follow and continued cautiously down into the lobby. Incredibly, it was as empty as the upstairs. Nor could he see anyone outside the broken front door. It was as though people who had menaced them had simply vanished. He took Laura’s free hand and led her out past the desk, through the door, onto the street. A pall of yellow dust lingered in the air. Still there was no sign of life. He coughed and led his wife in the direction he calculated the highway would be. Laura needed serious medical attention. His only thought was to get away, get help.
