Croak (3 page)

Steve looked as though he had just swallowed a socket wrench. “Sor-
ry,
” he said. “Just trying to be friendly.”

“Cram it, Steve.”

Lex’s mood was fouler than usual. Not only she was getting shipped off to Uncle Dementia’s Land of Psychosis, but she had also received the mother of all gloomy farewells when her family deposited her at the bus station. Mom had cried. Dad’s chin quivered. And Cordy wrapped her in a sullen embrace, digging her nails into Lex’s back as she whispered, “Get it all out of your system. Bring back the old Lex, or so help me God, I’ll tell everyone you went to musical theater camp.”

The two sisters had locked eyes once more as Lex took her seat by the window and the bus started to pull away. Lex broke the stare first, glaring sourly at the seat in front of her. If Cordy couldn’t see that this separation was equally excruciating on both ends, well, then, she deserved to be miserable.

Lex tried to return to her book, but even good old Edgar Allan couldn’t improve the dreadful situation into which she was being dragged at sixty-five miles an hour. Scowling at the total injustice of her life, she slammed the book shut and had just started scanning the vicinity for something to punch when a flash of red and blue lights caught her eye.

She squinted through the rain as the bus slowed to a crawl. A tractor-trailer had jackknifed across the highway, taking three cars with it. Everything was jumbled together on the grassy median in a tortured, twisted mass of metal. It was hard to tell where one vehicle ended and another began.

Both sides of the highway came to a standstill. Ambulance sirens screamed through the dull thudding of the rain as more emergency vehicles tore onto the scene. Lex surveyed the wreck with nothing more than a fleeting interest and a grim expression—until something bizarre appeared.

A white, blinding flash of light.

Startled, Lex peered through the rain. It was so brief—like the flash of a camera—that she couldn’t even be sure she had seen it at all. Or if she had, it must have been lightning—except hadn’t the light come from
inside
one of the cars? But that made no sense. The vehicle was crumpled beyond recognition, there were no signs of life.

Another flash, this time definitely emanating from within a rolled-over SUV. Lex looked at the paramedics, some of whom were shining flashlights into the cars—but none of their lights matched the brilliance, or the brevity, of the powerful blazes she had just seen.

Momentarily forgetting her policy of isolationism from the dreaded Bus People, Lex whipped her gaze around the coach, expecting the passengers to be gawking at the lights as well, but it seemed as if no one had even noticed. Some scanned the wreckage; a few grumbled about traffic. Lex huffed impatiently. Were these people blind?

She jabbed Steve, who was listening to music and attempting to sleep. “Ow! What?”

“Watch.”

He removed his headphones. “Oh,
now
you want to talk?”

“Grow up, Steve. This is purely out of necessity.” She leaned back in her seat so he could see out the window. “Look—there’s another one!” she yelled as the peculiar electricity sparked once more. “What is that?”

Steve squinted. “Um, a car accident, I think?”

Lex resisted the urge to grab his popped collar and send his head on a whimsical voyage through the glass. “
No,
I mean
that.
” She pointed at the SUV. “The weird flash that just came from that car!”

“You mean lightning?”

“
NO,
the—that!” she cried at another burst of light. “Right there!” She pounded her finger on the windowpane for emphasis, but Steve’s face remained quizzical.

A chill ran through Lex’s body. “Can’t you see them?”

“I don’t see anything but a massive car wreck and probably a lot of casualties.” Steve frowned in disapproval. “You shouldn’t rubberneck like that, it’s kind of an awful thing to do.”

Lex was about to dispense a salty retort, but she lost her chance as the bus sprang to life and they were jerked back in their seats. “No no no,” she whispered, twisting around as the bus picked up speed. “I’m not done yet.” But the bus driver pressed on, pumping the accelerator until the grisly scene was nothing more than a blur of lights fading into the distance.

Steve, disgusted, put his headphones back on. Lex swallowed and looked at her watch. An hour more until they reached Albany, then another two to Uncle Mort’s stop.

She reclined the seat and closed her eyes. Surely it had been some sort of meteorological phenomenon. Or maybe a bit of the lingering cocaine in the air had found its way into her system. Either way, hallucinations were not something she needed to add to her list of problems right now. There was too much other crap to deal with.

Including a snoring Steve, who was coming closer and closer to getting
The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe
shoved right down his throat.

Three hours later Lex finally stepped off the bus.

And into a gigantic puddle of water.

Luckily, by that point, hardly any passengers remained to witness her misfortune. Steve had gotten off in Albany, along with the cocaine guy and anyone else with enough sense not to continue farther upstate. She mumbled a thanks to the driver, who, obviously still bitter over the whole shoe-throwing incident, quickly closed the door behind her and mouthed, “Good luck.”

As Lex assessed her surroundings, she began to see why luck had suddenly become so essential. She was standing in a muddy trench on the side of the road, a road that stretched for about fifty feet in both directions before being swallowed up by trees. And the trees—Lex had never imagined that a forest could be so thick. It seemed as if they were actually fighting one another for floor space, an inextricable web of broad trunks and tangled, sprawling limbs.

She took out her phone. No reception. “Awesome.”

At least the rain had stopped. Lex shouldered her bag, pulled her hood up to block out the dismal gray sky, and scanned the road for any hints of human civilization. As her feet squelched in her soggy sneakers, she desperately hoped that the luggage her mother had packed and shipped ahead to her uncle’s house would contain at least one pair of extra shoes.

Of course it would. Knowing her mom, she had probably packed five, along with several handwritten notes proclaiming her unconditional love. A pang of guilt poked at Lex’s chest.

Whatever,
she thought, putting it out of her mind.
It was their foolish idea for me to come here, not mine.

Yet as she adjusted her bulging backpack and thought of Cordy—probably at work by now, scooping ice cream down at the local Baskin-Robbins, enjoying an endless supply of free chocolate chip cookie dough—Lex came to the conclusion that this whole insidious, rage-filled zombie thing, whatever it was, had been colossally unfair. Why her? And why smack-dab in the middle of high school, when it’s hard enough as it is to act like a normal, well-adjusted earthling?

She sighed and looked at her watch. Uncle Mort was supposed to have picked her up five minutes ago. Restless, she began walking down the muddy road, not even sure if she was going in the right direction. A bear would arrive to eat her soon, no doubt. She certainly hoped Mr. Truitt would be happy upon learning that her bloodied corpse had been found in a muck-filled ditch.

A loud rumbling in the distance paused her steps. Lex spun around. Something was coming.

She resumed walking. Nothing could scare her now. She’d welcome a hint of danger, in fact. A deadly grizzly attack would certainly be preferable to a summer of cow wrangling.

The noise grew louder, echoing off the damp trunks of the forest. It was only a few yards behind her now. Lex crammed her hands over her ears and finally broke into a run, but it was no use. The roar drew closer and closer—

And stopped.

Lex lowered her hands, turned around, and nearly shat her pants.

Sitting atop a black and purple–streaked motorcycle was, in a startling number of details, the exact type of villain depicted in the
Never Talk to Strangers!
picture book that had been drilled into Lex as a child: a man six feet tall, in his late thirties, lean but strong, roguishly attractive, and sporting the rather nondescript ensemble of a smudged white T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and heavy black combat boots. Peeking out from underneath his sleeves were samplings of what was undoubtedly an impressive array of tattoos, and a red, craggy scar ran from his right earlobe to the corner of whatever sort of eye hid behind his sunglasses. Clearly, this was a man who would waste no time in snapping the neck of anyone who happened to piss him off.

Yet this was only the beginning of what had unnerved Lex.

A distinct change in the air had settled over her skin the moment the engine stopped. The atmosphere itself started to crackle with a bizarre, nameless electricity. As she searched the man’s figure for an explanation, more and more peculiarities began to pop out. The pale, slender fingers wrapped around the handlebars looked like those of a skeleton, yet his face was tanned and featured at least two days’ worth of stubble. Circling his wrist was a dark gray iron band about an inch wide, the surface of which seemed to turn to static every few seconds or so, as if it were a television screen with bad reception. And topping it all off was the chaotic mess of hair on his head. Blacker even than Lex’s, and streaked with purple just like the bike, it stuck out in windblown, tousled spikes, as if he had stuck his finger into a charged socket only seconds before.

He cracked his knuckles. “Hop on.”

Lex remained very still. “Um, my ride should be here soon.”

“Aw, Lex.”

She blinked.

“You’re killing me, kiddo! Don’t tell me you don’t even recognize your Uncle Mort!”

What then escaped Lex’s lips was more than a gasp. The sheer force was such that she half expected the nearby trees to uproot and lodge themselves in her throat.

“You deaf?” Uncle Mort moved the sunglasses to the top of his head, revealing a pair of piercing green eyes. “I said get on.”

Lex didn’t move. “I’m actually not feeling the eviscerated-by-a-creepy-stranger thing today,” she said, unable to hide the nervous tinge in her voice. “My vital organs are just fine where they are.”

He let out a short laugh. “That’s funny. You’re funny.” He thumped the seat of the bike. “Now get on.”

“No.”

Her uncle’s eye twitched. “You had five hours to change your mind. Get on the damned bike.”

Lex’s hands grew hot, the way they sometimes did when she got mad. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“I wouldn’t lie to you. We’re family.”

“You don’t look like family. You look like a freak.”

“Okay, Lex,” he said, revving the engine once more. “I didn’t want it to come to this, but you leave me no—” His eyes widened at some unknown horror behind her. “Is that a
bear?
”

“What?” screeched Lex, twisting around to cower at —nothing.

But that millisecond of falsely placed terror was all Uncle Mort needed. Deftly grabbing her around the waist, he chucked her onto the seat behind him, kicked the bike into gear, and tore down the road as if blasted from a cannon.

“I can’t believe you fell for that!” he yelled over the roar of the engine.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Lex frantically threw her arms around his chest and screamed so loudly that a nearby flock of birds took to the air to escape the clamor. “Let me OFF!”

He sped up. “You’re welcome to jump at any time.”

Momentarily forgetting how wind works, Lex tried spitting at him. This failed. She wiped the goo from her cheek, deciding that the time for diplomacy had ended. Keeping one hand around his chest and balling the other into a fist, she exploded into a hysterical fury, pummeling his head, back, and, her very favorite target, kidneys.

Without even looking, Uncle Mort promptly reached back and grabbed her flailing arm, squeezing her wrist with a strength and certainty Lex had never before sensed from an adult. She stared at him with wide eyes as he stopped the bike and spun around to face her.

“You may have gotten away with this childish, petulant bullshit back home, but I assure you, it’s not going to fly here,” he said, letting go of her arm. “So I’ll cut you a deal: you behave like the mature individual that deep down I know you are, and in turn, you will be treated as such. Sound fair?”

Lex sat, stupefied. Over the past two years the various authority figures in her life had scolded, pleaded, lectured, cajoled, reprimanded, and threatened bodily harm, but none of them had spoken to her with anything resembling respect.

Uncle Mort took this brief opportunity of tranquility to toss her a helmet. “Almost forgot. Safety first.”

Lex took one look at the scar gashed into the corner of her uncle’s eye and quickly snapped the helmet onto her head. “Where’s yours?”

“I have a very thick skull,” he said, his eyes glinting with the sort of look possessed only by the criminally insane.

Lex stared. “You’re crazy.”

“Little bit.”

The motorcycle sprang to life yet again and shot down the road. Lex squinted against the wind as they rode, the trees a drab green blur, the road a dizzying ribbon beneath her feet.

“You ready, kiddo?” Uncle Mort eventually shouted.

“Ready for what?”

“A little excitement. Hold on!”

He sped up. Just as they approached a particularly grody puddle, he jerked the handlebars to the left. Lex hugged her uncle’s torso even tighter, her head lolling about in a comical fashion as the bike leaned into the turn, the mud splattering off the tires and onto her face. Lex briefly thought of her loved ones and prepared for death, pausing only to curse her uncle’s name straight to hell for robbing her of all the piercings she would never have the chance to get.

But the bike soon righted itself. “Are you out of your MIND?” she yelled, headbutting him with her helmet as they straightened out onto a narrow, darkened dirt road. She looked up at the impossibly dense trees, whose hostile gray branches now stretched over the road to form a low-ceilinged canopy. It was as if they were entering a bleak, sinister tunnel.