The Devil's Metal (37 page)

A cry broke my concentration. I turned in
the direction of the sound, and when my eyes adjusted to the
darkness, I could see shadows. There was a light coming from the
end, very faint, and with it came sand and wind. I figured that I
was at the rear, the bus was lying on its right side, and all the
windows at the front were broken.

“Hello!” I called out, choking on the
incoming dust. I wiped the blood off my forehead and pulled my
shirt up to cover my nose and mouth.

“Dawn?” I heard a weak voice. My heart
spasmed at the quiet fear and desperation that gripped it. It
sounded like Mickey.

“Mickey? Where are you? Are you hurt?”

Where was everyone else? Why was no one else
talking?

He coughed in response. It sounded wet and
ragged.

I got to my feet, grabbing onto the side of
the bed that was jutting out. I stumbled over a pillow and fell
against the wall. Only it wasn’t the wall. It was the side of the
bathroom and a huge obstacle I had to climb over in order to get to
Mickey and the front. I was dizzy, woozy, and my head was leaking
blood from where I had bashed it. It took all the strength I had to
try and pull myself up. I collapsed in a heap on top, almost
falling through the open door into the bathroom. With shaking arms
I reached over and pulled myself across the gap.

“Help,” Mickey cried, closer now.

“I’m coming,” I told him, coughing again, my
legs dangling in the bathroom. I slithered across the rest of the
wall and immediately met the two bunks. Mickey’s labored breathing
was coming from the top one, my bunk.

I leaned over the edge, feeling for him. I
touched a leg and he cried out in pain.

“Sorry!” I waited a few seconds, wanting my
eyes to adjust but I could only make out blurry shadows. “Are you
hurt?”

“Y-yes.”

“Where?”

“My…shoulder,” he broke into a leaky cough.
“M-my chest.”

“Do you know what happened?

“I don’t know. Something hit us. Robbie was
beside me, I heard him beside me just after it all stopped. Now I
don’t hear him anymore.”

I listened. All I could hear was the wind
whistling, the grit flying into the bus. I couldn’t hear Robbie. I
couldn’t hear anyone else.

Oh God, let Sage be okay, I prayed. It was
the only moment of fear I would give myself.

“Mickey, you’re going to be alright. I’m
going to find the light, okay? I know there’s one somewhere to the
side of your head, where the ceiling would be.”

“I can’t move.”

“That’s okay, stay still. I’ll find it.”

I tried to lean over as far as I could
without falling over on him, balancing my torso on the edge of the
bunk. I reached and fumbled with my hands and eventually found the
light switch.

“Close your eyes,” I warned him. I squinted
mine in preparation and flicked it on.

Mickey was lying below me, on the wall
beside my bunk. His eyes were squeezed shut. His chest and shoulder
were covered in blood, his shoulder twisted, his chest sunken in as
if something heavy had slammed into him. His face was ashen, paler
than death against his dark beard. I almost cried out but bit my
tongue hard, not wanting to scare him.

“Okay, Mickey,” I said.

He opened his eyes slowly, blinking hard at
me. “Your head.”

“I hit it,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“Where’s Robbie?” he started coughing. Blood
bubbled out of his lips.

I grimaced at the sight and looked over the
edge of the bunk. I could barely see him in the space beside the
other bunk but Robbie was there, lying on his stomach. For what it
was worth, I couldn’t see any blood in the darkness and after a few
seconds, I saw his back rise and fall.

“He’s there,” I said turning back to Mickey.
“He’s alive.”

Mickey smiled then wheezed and groaned.
Sweat appeared on his pale forehead.

“Hey, you’ll be fine,” I lied. “Hang in
there, boyo. I’m going to go see where everyone else is and get
help.”

“I’m sorry, Dawn,” he said.

His voice cracked. It broke my heart.

“For what?”

“I should have been nicer to you. I wasn’t.
I’m sorry. Please, please go visit Noelle when this is all
over.”

“Mickey…”

“Promise me. She needs a friend. She never
had any. She only had me. Promise me, please.”

I tried to smile. The sadness felt too heavy
on my lips. “I promise.”

“Thank you,” he said softly. Then his eyes
closed and his final breath escaped his bloodied lips.

My chest was heavy, feeling like I was being
choked from the inside. My throat was thick and I was unable to
swallow. I couldn’t do this right now. I couldn’t grieve. I’d lose
it. Mickey was dead, there was no way I could do anything for him
anymore. He was dead.

I looked away and made a point to never look
back. I shuffled myself along the side of the bunk and carefully
dropped myself onto the back of the couch. The wind was lessening,
calming down to a dull roar. I could see the shattered windows,
edges of glass splattered with blood. The sand seemed to hover in
the air, floating around like I was in a ghostly snowglobe.

I reached down to my feet, balancing on the
cushions, and felt around for the light switch on the wall. It came
on, flickering. Fiddles was lying in front of me, eyes rolled back
in his head, still as death. His head was twisted at a gruesome
angle, almost hanging down to his shoulder.

Keep it together, keep it together, I
chanted to myself, closing my eyes at the sight. Get out now.

I stepped around Fiddles, a few tears
leaking from my eyes, and tried to keep the feeling down that was
bubbling up inside.

The windshield was completely shattered and
sand had piled in, half burying the only way out. I got on my knees
and began to crawl through, clawing through the sand like I was
climbing a dune at the beach, keeping my back low so the sharp
blades of glass didn’t pierce my back and sides.

I was halfway out when I felt something
thick and unstable beneath me. It was soft. It was a person.

I felt around and touched a side, a chest,
an arm. I didn’t know if they were alive or dead. I pushed on the
arm, trying to flip the person over, praying over and over again
that it wasn’t Sage.

The person finally gave, sand sifting to
make room, and with one thump I was looking straight into Bob’s
white face. A huge piece of glass was sticking out of one bloody
hole that used to be an eye, the rest of the glass lodged deep in
his brain.

That did it. Bob was gone. My dear Bob was
dead. Bob who had the mortgage and the wife and loved Elvis. Bob
whose twinkly eyes and many stories would be going to the grave
with him.

I couldn’t hold it together any longer. I
screamed, taking in half the desert in my lungs. I flipped him over
so the glass wouldn’t cut me and I scampered out of the bus. I
dragged myself along, my breath hitched, nerves crying out, until I
felt solid ground and stony earth beneath me. I got to my feet and
looked around. I could just the see shape of the bus, lying on its
side. One half of it was crushed in where something had hit it.
Only something the size of a semi or another bus could do that.

I was too distraught to think properly.
Where was I again? Arizona. The highway. I needed to get help. I
needed to find Sage. Where was he? Where was Jacob?

I looked around, not knowing what direction
to go. I was blind in the dim storm. I walked haphazardly, tripping
over rocks, ignoring the cuts and bruises I could see on my
legs.

“Sage!” I called out. “Jacob?!”

My voice echoed eerily. I heard nothing but
the wind brushing past. My eyes watered from the sand.

I was about to call again when I heard
coughing to my left. I ran awkwardly in that direction, my leg
starting to hurt, until I saw a fallen shape on the ground.

I fell to my knees beside it, scraping my
skin.

It was Jacob.

“Are you okay?” I cried out. I put my hand
to his weathered forehead. It was hot. His eyes were closed
painfully.

“Rusty?” he asked, choking a bit on the
words. “I’m fine. Are you hurt?”

“Just my head. What about you?”

“Bloody leg.”

I looked down. His leg was bloody indeed. It
was crooked and a piece of white bone was jutting out of his torn
brown pant leg. I nearly vomited on him.

“I think it’s broken,” I said feebly.

He coughed. “No shit. Where is everyone
else?”

“Mickey, Bob, and Fiddles are all dead.
Robbie is still on the bus. He’s alive but unconscious, I think
anyway. I haven’t seen Sage or Graham.”

“I think we can assume they’re gone
together,” he said between coughs. “His birthday isn’t until
tomorrow at midnight. There’s still time. We can get him back. I
think I know where he might be.”

“You’re going to help me?”

“Of course, you natty bird.” He closed his
eyes and let out a moan, his legs stiffening out straight. “But
first, I need help. Go run to the road. It should be right ahead of
you. Get someone to drive to a payphone. The storm is
lessening.”

I patted his shoulder and got up. “Don’t die
on me, Jacob.”

“It would be my first occupational hazard,”
he answered. “I don’t plan on it.”

I nodded, and finding the last reserve of my
strength, I started running. It wasn’t long before I began to see
the shapes of waiting cars and was almost to the road when a dark
figure stepped in front of me.

“I’ve been looking for you,” said a coolly
sardonic voice. “Sage’s lovebird.”

It was Graham.

I cried out and turned around to run away
from him, only to find Sonja, Terri, and Sparky standing right
behind me, eyes black, mouths open in a pointy, demonic grin.

There was a blunt thud at the back of my
head and a starburst of pain. I was out before the ground met my
face.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I dreamed I was a little girl again. I was
playing at the edge of the swimming holes that perforated the
Columbia River, dipping my toe into the cool water but afraid to go
in.

“Come on, baby Dawn,” my mother encouraged.
I looked up. She was standing in the water, wet hair cascading down
the sides of her face. She looked young, strong, and beautiful.
“Come in the water.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t a strong swimmer
back then.

“I promise to hold onto you,” she cooed. “I
won’t let you go.”

She opened her arms and motioned with her
hands. Her smiling face was glowing.

“Come on,” she said again.

I hesitated. Then I walked in until I was up
to my knobby knees, then I plugged my nose and jumped in the rest
of the way.

It was dark and cold underneath the water
but I surfaced, my lungs gasping for breath.

“You can do it, baby Dawn.”

I doggy paddled toward her and when I was
close, she reached out and grabbed me. I clung to her shoulder like
she was a life preserver, instantly calmed by the feeling of her
skin against mine.

“See, I told you I wouldn’t let you go.”

I relaxed, resting my head on her
shoulder.

Suddenly my ear was being tickled by water.
Rising water. I looked up. My mom was staring forward with a blank
look on her face.

“I won’t let you go, baby girl,” she
whispered absently. Her words were ghosts that floated up in the
air.

Now the water was up to my chin. We were
sinking.

“I won’t let you go,” she said again.

I gasped for air as we were pulled down.

“I won’t let you go.”

The cold water covered my head. I opened my
mouth to scream but water rushed in and filled my tiny lungs.

My mother mouthed the words, “I won’t let
you go.”

***

When I came to, I was lying on my back and
my world was rocking back and forth, a shifting, splashing sound
filling my ears. I opened my eyes to see a black, star-lit sky,
open and expansive, stretching from one dark-hilled horizon to the
other. The moon was full and radiating against the darkness. I felt
terror wrap around me like a cold blanket, holding me still.

I tried to raise my head. Pain erupted from
several points and stars spun in my dizzying vision. I let out a
cry, unable to feel anything except the terror, except the
pain.

A splash came from my left. At first it was
just a sound. It continued, and soon I was being flicked with cold
water, making me flinch involuntarily. Each movement caused the
pain in my head to explode.

A vicious, melodic laugh erupted.

“Wakey wakey,” came a girlish voice. “Your
savior is here.”

“Dawn!” It was Sage.

I tried to sit up but my world was
immediately rocked. I tensed, trying to steady my arms, realizing
it wasn’t just the blows to the head that had made me dizzy, but
that I was lying on something extremely unstable. The lower half of
my body, my legs particularly, were sloping downwards and thick
vinyl was rubbing against my skin.

“Take it easy,” the girl said. “You don’t
want to drown yet.”

I forced my eyes open and waited for the
spinning to stop. When it did, I saw a lake lit by moonlight. I was
lying down on an inflatable raft that was bending awkwardly in the
middle. I looked down at my legs. There was a thick, very heavy
chain wrapped around them from my ankles all the way up to my
knees. I couldn’t move my legs to save my life and I realized that
was the point. It was a miracle the raft had just enough air in it
to stay buoyant with all the weight.

To one side of me, floating in the water up
to her chest was one of the most beautiful and terrifying people I
had ever seen. Long alabaster hair, sculpted cheekbones, and
iridescent eyes that looked like they were made of gold silk. For
all her beauty, there was something so immensely dreadful about her
that my skin crawled, like at any moment her face could change into
something so horrific that I’d die from fright.