There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (23 page)

             
“Did she bite him?”

Bud jumped at the sound of Josie’s voice. He didn’t hear her come up from behind him. Despite the heat, she was shivering. Lizard Lake was notorious for its cold spots. Or maybe she was shivering for a different reason.

She knelt beside Bud and looked into his eyes, pleading for some assurances. She decided she’d slug him later on for knocking her ass into the damn lake. This was hardly the time for retribution.

             
“I don’t think so, but look at all the damn slobber, Joe. Help me drag him into the lake. We’ve got to wash this shit off before it somehow gets into his bloodstream.”

             
“Let me help,” Tubby said, coming up to join them. He gave the huge dog a wary look, walking past her. The Gray’s eyes were closed; her slimy tongue lolling out the side of her massive head. She didn’t appear to be breathing. “This is all my fault, after all.” He leaned over Rusty, dripping cold water on the boy’s slack jaw.

             
Rusty squinted up at the people looking down at him, attempting to focus his notoriously bad vision.

             
“W-where’s m-my g-glasses?” he stuttered.

             
Josie looked around and saw them lying next to the dog. She eyed the animal uncertainly…

             
The beast looked as dead as her old hamster, Mr. Smee, buried in a cigar box in her backyard. “Wow, Bud,” she said, slipping the glasses back on Rusty’s face. “You really creamed that big bitch, didn’t you?”

At “Big Bitch”, Rusty began flailing about.

              Bud pushed him back on the ground. “Oh,
now
you want to run! Where was all this energy when we needed you to shag ass a few minutes ago?”

             
“Let me up!” Rusty hollered. “Let me up!” His paralysis returned, though, as soon as he saw the gray bitch, lying mere inches away. Gnat went stiff in an instant.

             
Bud rolled his eyes and nodded his head at Tubby.

             
“Help me tote Rusty over to the lake. Then you can tell us where the hell that Vermicious Kanit came from.”

             
“Uh, boys, don’t look now,” Josie said in a faraway voice. “But the Vermicious Kanit is waking up…”

             
Bud let his eyes slide over to the gray pile of fur, struggling now to lift her head off the ground.

             
Bud hadn’t killed her, just merely knocked her senseless. He should have known a lunchbox couldn’t dispatch a creature that size—even if it was Nolan Ryan doing the hurling. Still flat on her side, panting and wheezing, the gray bitch shook her head and blinked her smoldering eyes. Her thick tongue, slimy with snotty strings of saliva, slipped out the side of her cavernous mouth. It sagged there, limp and discolored.

             
Her breath was as foul as a festering wound. A sickly sigh that carried the scent of rot and ruin.

Yet again, it was her strange eyes that grabbed you by the balls—as if the devil himself was stoking the fires, burning bright and hot inside her head.

It wasn’t a natural thing, Bud Brown decided, those shining red eyes.  “
I know you
,” he said under his breath.

The dog seemed to smile. As if to say:
Of course you know me! We’re old friends, you and I…

“Bullshit,”
Bud swore under his breath.
You’re just a rabid dog. Not evil, just very, very sick.
Then, to his friends, he snapped: “Get your asses back in the lake!”

Josie shot him a look and then grabbed Tubby by the hand. Bud watched their backs for a moment more, and then tossed Rusty onto his shoulder. Gnat had slipped back into a near catatonic state.

The Gray shook her head again, the ropy saliva slinging to either side, and then struggled uncertainly to her feet. Like a newborn calf, she swayed and trembled.

Bud heard a large splash behind him, and then another smaller one. 
Tubby and Josie, safe now.

Reluctant to turn his back on the rabid dog, Bud slowly made his way backwards, keeping her in front of him. The Gray took a tentative step towards him, then another. She shook her head again, more vigorously this time, and seemed to regain her senses. She growled and bristled, her legs picking up steam. Then, without further ado, she was running straight at Bud!

Surprised at her rapid recovery, Bud took a giant, panicked step backwards…and all at once, he and Rusty were falling down the grassy embankment together. In a clotting cloud of red dust, tall grass, and little green lizards.

They slid to a stop at the lapping shore, panting and wild-eyed. Bud yanked Rusty to his feet and dragged him into the lake, dunking his head under the water, again and again. As if his friend was on fire.

              Rusty fought his way to the surface and shoved Bud aside. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” he sputtered and coughed. “Are you trying to drown me?”

             
“Can it, you meathead,” Josie said, swimming over to Rusty’s side. Tubby was dog-paddling right behind her. “Bud was only trying to wash all that canine slobber off you! Did that werewolf bite you, love?”

             
Rusty thought about it for a second, looking down at himself. Then he shook his head. “No. I-I don’t think so. Listen, Bud, I didn’t know—

`“
Shhh
,” Bud said. He pointed up at the gray bitch, staring down at them from the edge of the bank.

Then in a whimpering instant, she was gone.

The surrounding Pines lay still and quiet. The birds and insects silenced by this strange new danger in their midst. From a bird’s-eye view, all appeared normal. Just four kids treading water in the clear blue lake below. Of course, they couldn’t
leave
the lake or that crazy cur licking up her piss down there would have them for supper. They were safe as long as they stayed where they were. Only problem was, the fat kid couldn’t swim for shit.

             
Seeing Tubby’s difficulties, Bud said, “Let’s get up on the bank.” Realizing the wisdom in this, no one objected. Too frightened of the water, the Gray wasn’t likely to come down that sheer slope.

Tubby crawled onto the sandy shore and collapsed face down on the grassy bank. Gasping, he turned his head towards Bud, who was helping Josie climb out, when his lunch came rushing up. It lay steaming next to his head.

The Twinkies looked like bits and pieces of a yellow sponge, swimming in a pea green soup.

             
“You all right, Ralphie?” Josie commiserated above him. She patted him on the head and smiled.

             
He burped and gave her a pallid grimace in return. “Yeah, sorry about all the pu—”

He blinked up at Josie’s wet shirt in awe, the words stolen from his gaping mouth.
Golly!
his mind declared in wonderment. Josie’s frigid nipples were sticking out like two cherries on an ice cream sundae. The school polo had molded around each of her sodden breasts, the cold water making the clingy material near transparent.

Even under the circumstances, Tubby couldn’t help but gawk like a randy simpleton.

             
Bud hadn’t noticed at all. He was too busy scanning the ridge over their heads “Unless that’s your dickless dog up there, he said, pointing up at the sky, “and she’s pissed at you for forgetting to feed her, I can’t see how this is your fault.” He stood up as well as he could on the near vertical bank and tried to locate the rabid animal.

             
“I’ve never seen that crazy critter before in my life,” Tubby said, flopping over on his back. He managed to tear his eyes away from Josie’s chest. He wished she would do the same for him, stop looking down at him. He could just picture the pathetic sight he must’ve made—that steaming pile of green and yellow goo beside his head, his boy boobies as much on display as Josie’s magnificent mammaries. Any second and the pretty redhead would add her puke to his ponderous puddle.

             
“Neither have I,” Bud muttered. He turned to look at his other friends. “How ‘bout you guys?”

             
Noticing Josie’s clingy shirt for the first time, he did a double take on her all but naked breasts. Embarrassed at his lack of tact, Bud quickly looked away.

As always, tits were the last things on Rusty’s mind. He shook his head emphatically. “I’d remember that
got
-damn puppy! Biggest dog I know of belongs to Pops McAndles—and this giant bitch could eat him for a snack!”

             
“Must’ve come from the Army base.”

             
“You think so, Bud?” said Josie, pulling the sopping shirt away from her chest. It made a wet, sucking sound that made her blush right down to her toes. She felt all but nude above the waist. It didn’t help that her bra was too thin and too small, causing the top half of her breasts to swell out like rising dough. Rusty was too wired to notice, but Josie had seen the spastic looks on Bud and Tubby’s faces, their eyes nearly popping out of their heads.

             
Here I am about to be savaged by a psycho pooch, and I’m worried about me damn titties showing!

She crossed her arms over her chest and turned to Bud. “So what now? Wait until she goes into the Pines?”

              “Or dies?” Tubby added hopefully. “She’s real sick! Otherwise she’d have easily caught me back in the woods.”

             
“I say we stay
right
here,” Rusty insisted. “Eventually someone will come looking for us! Let them deal with that crazy fucking bitch!”

Bud’s upper lip curled. “You’d rather your mom or dad cope with that thing up there? Damn, Rusty. There’s a difference between being scared and being a pussy. Guess which one you’re being?”

              Rusty hung his head and began to cry. Bud had never spoken to him like that before. Josie stroked the back of Rusty’s neck and shot Bud the bird.

             
Bud’s reply was to scoot right up the bank. Josie opened her mouth to call him back but snapped it shut instead. She didn’t want to alert the Gray to Bud’s approach.
“Shhhh!”
she hissed down at Rusty.

             
He stifled his sniveling at once.

             
They held their breath as Bud stuck his head up over the bank. If the dog had heard him climbing up the slope, then she’d probably be crouched just out of sight now, waiting for him to pop into view. But as they watched Bud’s head pivot left, then right, and back and forth, they realized she wasn’t lying in wait at all.

             
At least not where Bud could see her.

             
Bud slid down the bank. “Huddle up,” he said, waiting for his friends to gather ‘round. “She’s gone. Probably back into the woods where she can lie down in the shade. I think the sunlight hurts her eyes. I read that somewhere about rabies. Tubby, you stay here with my man Rusty. Look him over for any scratches we might’ve missed. Joe, I want you to keep an eye out up there. She could be hiding in the grass. If you see her, give a sharp whistle, and then get back into the water. All right?”

             
Josie nodded. “Where you going, Buddy boy?”

             
“The Bunker, where else? That poor dog’s not only dangerous, Josie, she’s suffering…and we’ve got the 12 gauge cure for what ails her.”

            
 
Chapter Eigh
t
:

            
 
A Wicked Wind, this Way it Blows…

The Gray watched the children disappear over the ledge and into the hated water. The water she at once craved and yet feared above all else. The mere sight and smell of which drove her fevered brain to new heights of delirium. Her constricting throat, which pained her beyond endurance, rebelled at the mere notion of swallowing. Excessive saliva was her physiological response. Every joint in her body was stiff and in constant agony. The boy’s assault on her, with his metal missile, had increased the pounding in her head three-fold. He would pay for that. She rubbed her face against the ground, trying to wipe the molten itch from her eyes. Like her throat, her eyes were on fire. Yet strangely enough, her eyesight seemed otherwise unaffected—even if she did view the world now through a bloody prism. The light, however, stabbed into her brain like a thousand, needle sharp teeth. She lay for a time at the edge of the bank, waiting for the children to return, but the smell of the water and the bright sun overhead forced her retreat.