Well Fed - 05 (19 page)

The gray lick of cracked pavement stretched out before the SUV like a dead man’s tongue. All manner of vehicles haunted the road, some with sun-scorched corpses nearby, others just empty, as if their drivers had pulled over to stretch their legs and never came back. Black minivans, red sedans, a few sporty coupes, and others scrolled by. A few had left the road entirely and crashed into trees or run up sloping hillsides covered in yellow grass, their doors hanging open and drivers missing. Power lines drooped from steel frameworks along one side of the highway, their cement bases concealed behind trees. Roadside attractions and pit stops called to Gus at times, tugging loose memories of his younger days when he and his girlfriend or buddies would rip out of town, seeking the lure of the open road and a quick meal at KFC or some other food joint. Those moments seeped into his mind like bright poison, and Gus relived every one until his heart ached. The SUV stayed steady as he rolled northeast, up the 102. Tall transports cast long shadows, giving him pause—he mistrusted their corners until he snuck past them. A comfortable heat flooded the interior, and the plastic reincarnation of Captain Morgan sat on its back in the passenger side, gazing up in bright merriment. The Captain hadn’t said a word, maintaining that gallant smile, and for that, Gus thought himself fortunate.

The days when the old sailor
did
talk to him had to have been the darkest.

Wide rivers and open fields swept past his windows. Green signs counted down the distance to each approaching town. A heavy truck had stopped under an underpass, its flatbed of cut logs still stacked high, and he shot past the shiny red beast without stopping. When his fuel ran low, he stopped and spiked gas tanks, losing more than he could catch in one of the Tupperware dishes, but eventually gathering enough to satisfy the SUV.

During one long stretch of highway, Gus glanced into his rearview mirror and thought he detected movement. It bothered him enough that he slowed atop a crest and finally stopped and got out to peer back. He stood there, waiting a solid minute, and saw nothing. Being in such an open area, alone, was strangely disconcerting even though his old house had been a respectable drive outside the city limits. It hit him that he’d driven into Annapolis pretty much blasted out of his gourd, unlike the present moment, when all his senses were humming. After about ten minutes, Gus rubbed his bald head and got back behind the wheel. As an afterthought, he watched his side mirror in case anything was creeping up on him.

Nothing did, however.

The Captain’s smile seemed to widen.

Gus stopped for brunch in the parking lot of a dilapidated building near the word BINGO painted on a billboard facing the highway. He studied the word as he ate, repeating it in his mind, sensing a greater meaning he failed to grasp.

The once-bustling town of Truro came into view much more quickly than he’d remembered, and he stopped on a hilltop to gaze over it, eyeing large structures stamped with logos and brand names. He shielded his eyes with a hand, seeing the horizon rise up in a ring of frosty hills. A nearby sign pointed the way to lower Truro and Bible Hill, but nothing drew Gus in that direction.

Eventually, he drove off.

Clouds filled the afternoon sky, and around three thirty, Gus started thinking about getting off the road and camping for the night. The highway, with all its deserted cars, reeked of melancholy that he didn’t want to experience after dark. If he’d taken the right chemicals, he believed the shoulders of the road would be thick with the ghosts of motorists long gone.

The land opened on either side of him, the pale grass sometimes divided by fences of trees. The roads split more often into ramps leading to overpasses, but he didn’t take any of those just yet, knowing the 102 would eventually loop around into the 104, which crossed—like a T— the northerly road he currently drove on. A concrete wall began on his left, crumbled in places by crashed cars, but one lane remained open enough for him to proceed. In the distance, another overpass loomed. Several trailers rested on the bridgework crossing overhead, and something at the back of Gus’s skull sounded an alarm.

His foot eased onto the brake pedal, slowing his vehicle.

On the driver’s side, several cars had mashed their noses into the concrete barrier.

One minivan had two webby eyes perforating its windshield.

Bullet holes.

The sight drew Gus’s attention, distracting him.

A startling
crack
interrupted the hum of the SUV’s engine. The windshield splintered inward, and shards screamed past his right ear fast and hot enough for him to feel its heat. He stomped on the gas, jerking the wheel to the right in a screech of tire rubber and a twisting lurch of his guts. Cars and pavement blurred, becoming landscape. The front wheels bounced over an embankment much higher than he expected. A pond rushed toward him, only barely glimpsed through the blinding tracery of the bullet holes.

Then the dashboard exploded, and the world died.

Something hammered into Gus’s stomach, forcing a gasp to explode from his diaphragm. Another blow made his darkness pirouette from the impact. A rumble of thunder reached him then, echoing off distant hills, sounding suspiciously like whale song.

“—hit him again and put––”

That string of words came to Gus in a tangle of consciousness just before he drifted off once more. More strikes to his body felt as if they were happening perhaps twenty fathoms down in a very deep sea. He rocked, trying to swim, but couldn’t summon his arms or his legs. The sensation of reaching for something occurred to him, which puzzled that one little, still-functioning part of his brain. Then a sharp pain stabbed him, as if a ship had gone hard to starboard in his lower abdomen before the hull crunched into unforgiving ice.

“––dead I’m fuckin’ tellin’ ya––”

“He ain’t dead. Look.”

Another blow rang him like a bony gong.

“I think he’s wakin’. He look like he’s wakin’ to you?”

“Fuck I look like? The goddamn surgeon general? I’m outta my element here.
This
is what I do best.”

Laughter, distant yet resounding directly in his skull, ended with another solid crunch to Gus’s ribs, pulling him out of that midnight stew of blackness by his arms.

“You do that very well,” a voice said, middle-of-the-road in terms of timbre.

“Think I broke my fuckin’ hand that time,” someone winced.

“I did that shit once. My right hand too. Had to wipe my ass with my left.”

“Think I remember that. You smelled of shit for a month.”

More laughter—good old boys just hangin’ out and shootin’ their mouths off. Gus almost smiled then, nearly surfacing right there.

“Look!” another voice said, charged with discovery. “Fuckin’ meathead damn just
smiled
that time.”

“Wha?”

“Edgar’s right. That not-dead fucker smiled. He’s comin’ around.”

“Fuckin’ about time. Only been tenderizin’ his hangin’ ass for the last hour.”

“You fuckin’ hit like a goddamn girl anyway, Murray.”

“Yeah, your mother said the same thing.”

“Don’t you be saying shit about my mother. Don’t you even fuckin’
dare
. That shit’s disrespectin’.”

“Sorry. Meant to say
fuck you
.”

“No, fuck
you
.”

“All right, lay off, both of ya. Jesus Christ.”

“Murray’s only pissed off cuz fireboy wasn’t a woman.”

“I
am
pissed. I was hoping for a prime slab of meat. Not
this.
”

“Fuck, bro, you think you’re the only guy here hurtin’ for a piece of pink?”

“Yeah, but you got Ryan there.”

Harsh laughter was drowned out by a low and menacing, “The fuck you say to me, cocksucker?”

“I said…”—a throat cleared in earnest at that point—“on the good nights, when you need that little extra-sweet lovin’, Ryan even takes his teeth out.”

“You little––”

“Look, he’s wakin’,” another voice said, cutting off the discussion.

In his private darkness, Gus realized he
was
waking.

“He should be. Lazy fucker been sleeping long enough. Goddamn sonavabitch truly is a hunk of hangin’ meat. Goddamn tired of this fuckin’ bullshit nonsense. Lemme cut his balls off. That’ll make him holler.”

Laughter—someone moved closer to him. Gus tried to move his arms, but they weren’t working. His chin rested on his chest, and his eyes opened, revealing his bare feet lashed together with a dirty piece of rope and anchored to a rusty tire rim. His shoulders ached in their sockets, and his ankles felt as if they suffered from extreme carpet burn. Cold prickled his skin.

A mixture of bad body odor and motor oil enveloped him.

“Good mornin’, sunshine,” a phlegmy voice said, greased in false cheer. A tall, lean individual appeared, dressed in a woodsman jacket that had seen better days. Gus raised his chin and balked at a black-bearded brute with sparkling gray eyes––the eyes of a killer no longer fearful of exhibiting once-suppressed urges. Those smoky marbles glistened, taking Gus in, seizing him, and the beard hitched back into a sweet smile, revealing not the salmon pink of a healthy set of gums but rather a viral lime
green
that might have taken root all the way to the man’s brain. A pair of eroding incisors dotted the horrible mouth. If Gus didn’t know any better, he would have sworn a mad trapper had come down out of the hills.

That frightening visage raised a knife—a big, gleaming sword of a blade, with a curved tip as tapered as a candle’s flame. Gus lifted his chin further and pulled on his bonds, quivering in place like a crudely twanged bowstring.

“Shhh, now, shhhh…
shhhhh
,” Gray Eyes said, pouting dramatically. His round eyes blazed with a feral craziness so bright it was difficult to tell if the man had eyelids.

For the first time in his life, Gus felt genuinely fearful of what was about to happen.

“Been waitin’ all mornin’ for you, sunshine,” Gray Eyes whispered and smiled that maniacal grin. Indistinct shapes crowded in behind him. “Been waitin’ for you to open them pretty eyes of yours.”

The knife’s cold tip touched the fleshy bag under Gus’s right eye, and he suddenly held his breath. He realized with horror he’d been stripped down to just his blue Fruit of the Looms.

Gray Eyes kept his berserker smile in place and drew closer, his eyes growing bigger, impossibly wilder, to the point where Gus didn’t think he was a man at all but some feral missing link somehow mistaken for a man. Gray Eyes zoomed in closer while evil chuckles sounded around the edges of reality, issuing from the watchers. Gus never had a chance to compose himself. He was trussed up good and damn-near-bowel-looseningly fearful. Gray Eye’s face started to tremble, as if a thousand volts suddenly ripped through his frame, his eyes as maddeningly bright as headlights. The knife dug into the baggy sac below Gus’s eye, and Gus released a whimper of terror. A shiny rivulet of scarlet streaked over his cheek.

“Do it, Boll,” someone hissed anxiously in the background. “Hook that eye out.”

“One flick of the wrist, bro. All that’s to it.”

“Fuck yeah—I’m
hungry
here.”

“I wonder,” another speculated, “if an eye is on the cheek—just hangin’ there but, like, still attached to whatever, y’know?—like, can it still see? Or is it all swively and shit?”

Insane Boll and his train wreck of a smile still didn’t blink. He moved closer until his left eye stared into Gus’s, not an inch away.

“Go on,” Boll chuckled in that tainted, gravelly voice of his, which reeked of graveyard meat. “Go on. Do somethin’…
heroic
. Like head butt me. Y’know, somethin’
crazy
. Go on.”

But Gus didn’t. Instead, he squeezed his eyes shut and braced himself for that terrible hot or cold—or both—sensation that would come with being stabbed in the face.

“Well, Jesus H…” Boll grumped, the eagerness in his voice suddenly tepid.

Then a chortle of hyena laughter rose from the audience.

“Scorched shit flicker
pissed
himself!”

Gus realized it was true. His terror had grown to such proportions, he hadn’t even realized his bladder had had enough and just cut loose, saturating his Fruit of the Looms.

Boll backed away in obvious disgust, his smile disappearing behind that monstrous duster of a beard. Those hell-bright gray peepers dimmed as he glanced down—and Gus saw that the man did indeed have lids—but then they flicked back up and beheld his captive with a disgust so raw Gus thought his time on this depopulated planet had finally come to an end.

“You fuckin’ almost pizzled on me,” Boll grumbled like a Kodiak coming out of hibernation. “You dirty bird, you.”

Boll stepped forward, slashing downward in an overhand chop, his knife parting the skin covering Gus’s ribs and grazing five of them before the razor edge leaped off the last rung and missed the fluttering snare drum of his exposed stomach.

The sound of pattering reached his stunned brain, and Gus wasn’t sure whether it was from his bladder emptying itself or his blood. He glanced down and saw Boll’s cut, one that would definitely need stitches, issuing a red river that positively gleamed against his pallid flesh.

Gus panted, nearly passing out.

The butt of the knife bounced off his nose, stunning him in a flash of black light and keeping him in agonizing reality.

“Y’get to keep your eye. This day,” Boll warned and ambled off toward a huge motor home.

Gus winced and shifted, noting he was in a chuck-wagon ring comprised of big RVs, some white, some tiger striped, and he was hung from the hook-and-boom winch system of an old tow truck. A cluster of men surrounded him, five total, sitting in leather recliners or on lawn chairs. Each resembled something milked out of the ass end of some inbred clan of mountain folk. Heavy beards hung off unseen chins. Gold teeth glimmered. They laughed and shook their heads. Boll’s little show of terror had greatly amused them all.

“Well, then,” one of the hillbillies announced and stood up. Unlike the others, his was the only head shaven to the quick. A leather coat hung off gaunt shoulders. The coat flapped open, revealing a thick sweater as well as a sheathed knife hanging off a belt. “Murray, get on up to the overpass. Time’s a wastin’.”