The Devil's Metal (36 page)

But he didn’t.

He brushed the hair off my forehead and
planted a kiss there.

“I’m carrying this burden just as I’ve
carried it every day since I was fifteen. You’re going to live a
long and happy life, Dawn. I promise you this.”

He stroked my cheek sadly, then got to his
feet and walked into the dressing room. I was left on the floor,
dying inside.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The drive from San Antonio to Phoenix was
one of the longest of my life. I was so trapped in my own head,
wallowing in my own misery that I couldn’t sleep. I just sat at the
table watching the bus’s headlights shining on the dark, open road.
I knew Graham was also up, lying on the couch, but he didn’t say
anything to me. I started to question my sanity, how I could just
sit there with an actual demon close by. Maybe it was because
Graham had so many sad, pathetic human qualities that it was hard
to imagine he was anything but human. But I remembered what his
face looked like that one time, and the creepy vibe, like tendrils
of underlying horror, that came off of him was pretty hard to
ignore.

It was probably two in the morning when
Jacob came over to me and gently placed my notebook and pen in
front of me.

“Write, Rusty,” he told me in a hushed
voice. “Write the story you were born to write.”

I looked at him and then at Graham. Both of
them were staring at me with otherworldly intensity. One leaning
toward darkness and death. The other promising safety and light.
Both of them wanted me to write the article to fulfill the terms of
the contract so Sage’s request could be completed. And I wanted to
write the article for the same selfish reason I had in the first
place: I wanted respect. I wanted to be admired. I wanted the world
to know I was a writer.

I picked up the pen and started to
write.

***

I woke up with my head on the table, the
pencil leaning out of my hand. I couldn’t remember when I had
fallen asleep but I had written several pages of the article
already. It was probably all shit, but in my sleep-fogged brain, I
was proud.

I raised my head and looked around. The bus
was rolling down the desert highway, red rocks and craggy,
cactus-dusted hills spreading as far as one could see. It was
hauntingly beautiful in its bareness.

Bob was at the wheel as usual, humming along
to the gentle strumming of Led Zeppelin’s “Going to California.”
Graham was snoring on the couch. Everyone else in the bus still
seemed to be asleep. It was quiet and the early morning light
spread through the windows, enveloping everything in a hazy warmth.
I felt strangely optimistic, considering what had happened the
night before. The way I had hurt Mel. That terrible look on her
face. But the optimism was usually a side effect of having written
something I’d been putting off for a long time. It was the high
that came from conquering procrastination.

I got out of the seat and stretched, then
whispered good morning to Bob and set about making coffee and a bit
of breakfast with the leftover eggs and bacon that were in the
fridge. Nothing works like the smell of bacon and the sound of
Zeppelin to get everyone on their feet.
The children of the sun
begin to wake
, I sang along in my head.

Soon I was dishing out more food than I had.
Robbie, Mickey, and Fiddles were hung over, which was actually nice
to see. It meant they were back to their partying ways and things
were feeling normal even though they very much weren’t.

Sage sat next to me at the table and Robbie
raised his brows at us, eating his eggs gleefully. “So a little
birdie told me he caught you two banging on the floor
yesterday.”

“Fucking Chip,” I mumbled, while Sage just
glared.

Robbie shrugged and shoved bacon in his
mouth. “Hey, dudes, I don’t care. Good for you. You know Sage here
needs to get laid more. So uptight, brother!”

Sage shook his head in amused annoyance. I
could tell he was going to miss being with Robbie when all was said
and done. So many years, so much blood between them. Robbie with
his joy and insecurities. His voice. I hoped he would come out of
this okay. If the demons left him alone, Robbie could go on to
become one of the best singers the world had ever known.

“What the hell is that?” Jacob asked.

We all turned to look at him as he stood in
the aisle, his eyes focused on the road ahead. I craned my neck
around Robbie and peered through the windshield.

In the far distance where the golden haze
met ragged cliffs, a gigantic, all-encompassing dust cloud was
rising on the horizon. It was so big it almost curved with the
earth, and it was growing bigger—and closer—by the second.

“Looks like a dust storm,” Bob remarked. He
shifted gears and the bus began to slow down.

“That’s a dust storm?” Robbie exclaimed. “It
looks like the fucking apocalypse.”

“Yes, it does,” Jacob said grimly. He was
now staring steadily at Graham. Graham was grinning. He looked like
a monkey baring his teeth.

“Is this your work?” Jacob asked.

Graham laughed and slapped his knee
theatrically. “You think I created a dust storm? Who am I,
God?”

Jacob shook his head and fixed his eyes back
on the road.

“Definitely not,” he muttered under his
breath.

“How far away from Phoenix are we?” asked
Sage.

“We just crossed into Arizona,” Bob yelled
over his shoulder. “At least another four hours.”

“Can we just go around it?” Robbie
asked.

“Only if we want to skip the show and drive
to California instead,” Mickey commented. “Look at the size of that
fucker.”

“Dude,” agreed Fiddles.

I looked at Jacob. “What do we do?”

He didn’t look too happy. He shrugged. “Bob?
Have you dealt with this kind of crazy shit before?”

“Yup. Nothing this big though. We should be
fine. The green machine should keep out most of the dust. We’ll
just pull over, far off the road. We won’t be able to see anything
soon.”

“America,” Jacob muttered to no one in
particular. “You always have to make everything so big.”

Sage adjusted in his seat and grabbed my
hand, giving it a squeeze. I gave him a small smile of thanks.

The storm moved fast. Bob pulled the bus a
bit off the road and other cars on the highway began to do the
same. Considering how busy Interstate 10 was, this was actually an
impressive feat and an incredibly eerie sight.

We waited, holding our breaths, sitting
absolutely still, as if the cloud was a voluminous monster hunting
and stalking us. The bus began to shake from the winds, windows
rattling. Grains of sand hit the glass with a peppery sound. Then
the cloud was upon us and daylight was eaten from above, plunging
us all into a gritty darkness. The sound was deafening, a mixture
of howling winds and scratching sand, like someone was running
their nails down the side of the bus. I gripped Sage’s hand, all
too certain that demons were outside, circling the bus, figuring
out a way to get in.

All of us sat there in wonder and fear for
what seemed like forever.

“Is this ever going to end?” Robbie asked.
He sounded scared. I could barely see him in the murky dimness, but
I could tell he was chewing on his nails.

“It will at some point,” Bob said from the
front. He reached down to the console and flicked a switch. The
light in the kitchen came on, giving us all enough room to see each
other. Understandably we looked scared to death, and ghoulish too,
our faces swamped by shadows. Bob turned on the radio, I guess to
lighten the mood, and The Allman Brother’s “Midnight Rider” came
on. A gorgeous tune reminiscent of sunny skies, not being trapped
on a bus in a sandstorm.

“How long has it been?” asked Mickey after a
few minutes.

Jacob was in the middle of pulling out his
pocket watch when there was a slow knock at the bus door.

We all jumped, my heart trying to beat its
way up my throat.

“Who the fuck is out there?” Robbie
asked.

We all stood up, trying to get a look.

There was a knock again. You could barely
see a white fist as it met with the door.

Bob was worried. “They’re crazy for being
out there. Maybe they need help.”

He went to pull on the lever that would open
the bus door.

“Don’t!” Sage shouted, his voice booming
above the wind and sand. “Don’t open the door, Bob.”

Bob paused and shot us a funny look. “Why
not? They could be hurt.”

The knock came again.

“Sage is right, don’t open the door,” Jacob
reiterated, trying to convince him.

Bob looked at me. I gave him a look that I
hope told him “remember what we talked about.”

It seemed to work. He nodded at me, biting
his lip and slowly sitting back down.

“Why can’t he open the door?” Fiddles
asked.

“Probably too much dust,” Mickey told him.
“It’ll come right in.”

“But what if they’re hurt like Bob said?”
Graham got to his feet.

Jacob put his hand out, holding him back.
“No one is opening that door, especially you.”

“Why especially him?” Robbie asked.

“Yeah, Jacob,” Graham repeated, a taunting
look in his dark, demonic eyes. “Why especially me?”

The knock happened again. Mickey stood up
and started looking around him. “This is nuts. Anyone at least know
where the flashlight is so we can light up this fucker?”

Meanwhile, Fiddles drummed on his knee and
sang along to the song, “But I’m not going to let them catch me,
no, not going to let them catch the midnight rider.”

“I’m going for it,” Graham said, trying to
push past Jacob. Jacob responded by winding up and clocking Graham
right in the face, sending him backward onto the couch.

“Holy fuck!” Robbie shouted, jumping to his
feet.

Graham stirred, holding his bleeding face,
while Jacob turned around and sneered at the band like a cornered
animal. “No one,” he bellowed, “but no one is allowed to open that
door. No matter what happens! Is that understood?”

Silence and Greg Allman’s voice filled the
room. I looked at everyone. We were all scared as shit. Mickey,
Fiddles, and Robbie seemed glued to their spot.

Sage put his arm around me and whispered
into the top of my head, “It’s going to be okay.”

Mickey looked at us and at Jacob. “Can
someone please explain what the hell is going on?” His eyes were
glistening as if he were on the verge of tears.

Jacob shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe
us if we tried.”

Robbie opened his mouth to speak when he was
cut off by a cacophony of dozens of fists pounding on the bus. We
were surrounded, long white limbs pounding on every available
window and down the sides of the bus, long pale fingers splayed
against the glass like ghosts through the sand. It was deafening.
Terrifying. And there was no way we’d be getting out of this
alive.

“Drive, Bob,” Sage said, softly at first.
Then, when no one moved, everyone’s eyes still drawn to the hands
and fists that were pounding on the bus, he yelled, “Drive! Drive!
Move it! Drive, Bob, fucking drive!”

Bob snapped out of it and dropped back in
the driver’s seat. He turned the key in the ignition. The bus
sputtered but wouldn’t turn over.

“Oh, no, no, no,” I cried, panic spreading
in my bones like cancer.

“What’s going on?” Robbie yelled. “Sage,
why…”

The pounding continued. I tried not to look
at the skinny arms as they slid down the glass, fingers itching to
come in and grab us and take us to Hell.

“Fuck, it’s the battery,” Bob yelled, trying
again and again to start the bus. “It’s dead!”

Mickey reached over and switched off the
radio. Without the music, the pounding was more real, more
horrific.

“Did you have to listen to the fucking
Allman Brothers!” Jacob yelled.

Graham started laughing hysterically from
the couch, blood spraying out of his mouth. A tooth flew out and
landed in the aisle at Jacob’s feet.

And just as quickly as the thrashing
started, it ended.

Our eyes flew to the windows. The people
were all gone.

The only sound was the blasting wind and
sand.

We were alone.

“Okay.” Robbie breathed out slowly. “Someone
explain who those people were and what the fuck they were trying to
do.”

We were all still, afraid to move, afraid it
would attract them if we did.

Bob was the first to break the spell and he
tried the engine again. It started with a loud roar.

I clapped loudly, almost hysterical, and Bob
laughed with a sick sense of relief.

“Thank the lord!” he proclaimed.

“You guys?” Robbie asked again, needing
answers.

I was about to exchange a look with Sage to
see if either one of us was going to say something when Graham’s
laughter stopped.

“They’re coming,” he whispered, his eyes
closed, blood pouring out of his nose and mouth.

Bob turned in his seat to shoot him a look
when there was a horrific crash, the sound of a dying metal beast,
of a bus being broken as some speeding object smashed into its
side. I was thrown out of Sage’s grasp and chucked across the bus,
my head slamming into the cupboards above the couch. Blood filled
my eyes. There was the sound of breaking glass, people screaming
horrifically like they were being tortured. The bus rolled and
tumbled over and over: blackness, sand, wind. I felt hands and legs
touch me briefly, and by the time I knew to reach for them they
were gone.

When it all came to a stop, the metal
groaning from all around, I didn’t know if I was alive or dead.
Everything was dark. I groped around for a feeling of something
familiar. I found a small, short box and a handle. A cupboard. I
moved my hands up, amazed that they weren’t broken, and they met
with something stuffed. A mattress. I tried to think where I was.
Maybe in the rear bedroom? All I knew was I had been tossed far
when the bus tumbled, spinning me around like a rag in the washing
machine.