He spun the car to the left, in the direction of the slide, and tightened his hands on the wheel, until the tires bit into the road. He concentrated on the ramp ahead. The speedometer read forty when he entered it, heading toward San Francisco, sixty when they shot out onto the interstate.
He let the needle climb to seventy-five, thought about passing the semi ahead, then decided against it. He didn’t want to be stopped for speeding. He settled back, slowed to sixty-five and rode in the wake of the big truck.
Then the girl screamed.
“ Please stop.” He glanced over at her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She screamed louder. She was shaking, hands pushing against the dash for support.
“ Please!” He raised his voice more than he wanted.
She stopped. He grabbed another quick look. Sweat ringed her forehand. Small spasms seemed to be running through her body, but the violent shaking had stopped.
“ You’re safe now. That thing can’t get you here.”
She was quietly sobbing.
“ Are you all right?”
She nodded, wiping a tear from her eye with a bent finger.
“ I’m Jim Monday.” He glanced at her when he said it, saw a flicker of understanding. “You must know who I am. I saw you when you arrived with Washington, the cop from Long Beach. I was hiding in the shrubbery, by the parking lot. I snuck in the car after you went to check in. I needed sleep. Then I saw that thing creeping out from under your car before I had a chance to nod off. How did Washington know where I was?”
She didn’t answer and he put her out of his mind as he followed the big truck north.
Ten miles later she said, “You stink.”
He was covered in wet cow manure. It was in his hair, on his face, neck and arms. It was seeping through his clothes. He was surprised that it didn’t repulse him, surprised that he’d adjusted so quickly.
“ Compared with that thing back there, a little cow shit is the least of my problems.”
“ They’ll catch you pretty quick looking and smelling like that.”
“ Where’s your shoes?” he asked, looking down at her bleeding foot.
“ I only went to get cigarettes from the car. I should have listened to my father and stayed in the room.”
“ Washington is your father?”
“ Yes,” she said. “My name’s Glenna.”
“ And he brought you along after a killer?”
“ He doesn’t think you’re a killer. He wants to prove you’re not.”
“ I am,” he said, knuckles white on the wheel.
“ No, my dad wouldn’t try to clear you if you were guilty.” She was running her hands through her hair now, pulling it back. Then she wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.
“ I didn’t say I was guilty. I killed two of the ones in the police station. Not the cop.” He relaxed his fingers, now holding the wheel like it was a thing to be caressed.
“ And the ones at the inn?” she asked.
“ What are you talking about?” He white-knuckled the wheel again as a chill whipped up his spine, lightning-quick, but glacier-cold.
“ My Dad went to Edna Lambert’s room to find you. He said the walls were covered in blood.”
“ And the Lamberts?”
“ There were no bodies,” she said with a lost little girl voice. She was still very frightened.
“ That thing killed Roma.”
“ Who?”
“ My wife’s sister, her twin.”
“ I’m sorry.”
He nodded and they rode the next ten miles without speaking.
“ You know,” she said, breaking the silence, “you still stink. Don’t look very pretty either.”
“ I’m in a hurry.”
“ For what?”
“ To get to Tampico.”
“ You’re convinced Kohler is behind the attempts on your life?”
“ You know a lot.”
“ Dad and I talk.”
“ Yes, I believe Kohler’s trying to kill me.”
“ Why?”
“ That’s the question, isn’t it? He already has my wife. She’ll get half my money. So why? It doesn’t make sense. But it’s him. I believe it and if you’d been through what I have, you’d believe it too.”
“ I didn’t say I didn’t believe you.”
“ What about your father?”
“ He’s trying to prove you’re innocent.” She sat back in the seat, sighed. She sounded more like a woman now, her voice soft and sure. She didn’t seem afraid anymore.
“ I wish I could believe that,” Monday said, again relaxing his hands on the wheel. Earlier he was afraid she’d go ballistic on him. Scream, rage, maybe go into shock. She was past that now. She’d adjusted quickly. She was stronger than she looked.
“ It’s true,” she said.
“ Then I wish him luck.”
“ So you’re on your way to Tampico to confront Kohler and fight to the death?”
“ No, yes, I don’t know, something like that, maybe.”
“ How far do you think you’ll get smelling like that?”
“ Far enough.”
“ And when is the last time you had some sleep? You look dead behind the wheel. You’ll never make it another three hundred miles without rest.”
“ I’ll make it.”
“ And what about me? What are you going to do with me?”
“ I’ll let you go at the next city.”
“ You can’t.”
“ Why not?”
“ I could talk. I know where you’re going.”
“ You said your father is trying to clear me.”
“ But what if he isn’t? You acted like you didn’t believe me.”
“ I don’t have any choice. I’m not a kidnapper.”
“ You didn’t kidnap me, you saved my life. And you do have a choice. You can take me with you.”
“ No.”
“ I want to go. Look at it this way, I can tell the police how you saved my life. I’ll be a great character witness. And I can be useful.”
“ How?”
“ You can’t rent a motel looking like you do. And you’re going to need one, or you’ll collapse on the road. You will. You’ll fall asleep at the wheel, but if you don’t want to stop to rest, you could sleep while I drive.”
“ Why?”
“ My dad is working to prove you’re innocent. I want to help. I love him, but I want to show him that I’m not a little girl anymore.”
“ Okay, you can stay. I need all the help I can get.”
“ What was that thing back there?” she asked without thanking him.
“ I don’t know, some kind of weird animal. It killed Roma,” he repeated.
“ And you’re running away from it? That doesn’t sound like you.”
“ It’ll be back.”
“ How do you know?”
“ You wouldn’t believe me.”
“ Try me.”
“ It’s too fantastic, impossible to believe. You’d think I was crazy.”
“ That giant gecko was impossible, but I believe in it. I’ll believe you. Tell me.”
“ I’ll have to start from the beginning.”
“ That’s always the best place to start.”
He looked ahead, keeping his eyes glued between the semi’s taillights, forcing his mind back to yesterday morning. God, was that all the time that had passed? One day and it seemed like forever. The story was hard to tell, but he told her. Everything, starting from when the voice in his head told him to jump back, till he saw the shark-like teeth drag Roma among the cattle.
That was the hardest part to relive. He tried to get to her. He slid back under the fence, swallowing dirt and cow shit. He screamed. Something struck him on the head. He was nauseous. He fought to stay conscious, but he must have blacked out. He woke about an hour later, according to his watch, and vomited. Then he cried.
“ Stop it. You have to move. It’ll come back. It’s after me.” Donna had thought.
In his grief, he tried to ignore her.
“ Don’t shut me out. Talk to me.”
“ She’s dead,” Jim had thought. His grief weighed him down, like he was covered in lead.
“ And I’m sorry, but you’re alive, and I’m kind of alive, and if we don’t move out of here we won’t be.”
“ I’m not sure I want to live.”
“ Well I do, so move it!” She forced her will on him. Made him get up. Made him walk back to the car.
“ I don’t know what to do now,” he’d thought.
“ You go on with your life till we figure how to get me back.”
“ Back where?”
“ Back where I belong and out of your head.”
He started for his room.
“ No! Don’t go back up there,” she’d thought.
“ Why not?”
“ Let’s not get any other friends killed.”
“ I don’t understand?” He’d thought.
“ That thing is after me. I know it. It will do anything to keep me from getting back, kill anyone that will assist me. It killed Roma. It will kill the Lamberts if we let it. And it will kill you. It wants you most of all, because you have me.”
“ Then why didn’t it kill me back there?”
“ It has to feed on its kill before it can go after another.”
“ Oh God, Roma.”
“ Don’t go up there, get out of here.”
“ I need rest. So tired.”
“ Then get in the car. Rest a few minutes, then we go, we have to,” she’d thought.
Listening to himself tell it made him realize just how insane it sounded.
“ That’s when I saw you,” he said, finishing the story. “You know the rest.”
Glenna had been silent for the twenty miles it took him to tell the story and now he sat back, eyes ahead, still on the semi’s taillights, waiting for her to denounce him as crazy.
“ You slept with your wife’s twin sister? How could you?”
“ It wasn’t like that.”
“ Don’t you have any control?”
“ I loved her.”
“ Look out.”
He tightened his grip, brought the car back under control.
“ You almost drove us off the road,” she said.
“ I’ll be okay.”
“ I’m sorry. I’m not one to judge. I’ve never had a lover.”
“ You mean-”
“ No, I’m not a virgin. I was raped when I was sixteen. My one sexual experience.” She told him about the rape and what her father had done. “I’ve learned to live with it. I’m not afraid of sex or anything like that, I’m just waiting for Mr. Right to come along.”
“ Why tell me?”
“ You told me something that must have been hard to tell. A deep secret. I thought I’d tell you one. Fair is fair. Besides, I needed to tell someone.”
“ Why hasn’t she asked about me?”
“ Why haven’t you asked about Donna, the voice in my head?”
“ Do you want to know, or is that her asking?”
“ It’s her asking, but I’d like to know too.”
“ Because I believe you. You don’t seem crazy. There’s plenty of things out there I don’t understand-that lizard thing back there, God, Satan, war, famine, why we can’t all get along, what makes an airplane stay up. Donna in your head is just one more.”
“ Then I should send you back to your father, before that thing comes back.” He glanced over at her. She was too young to be caught up in something like this. She belonged on a quiet college campus somewhere, enjoying life as only college kids know how, not here, with him, running from who-knows-what in the middle of the night. She didn’t need this and he shouldn’t involve her.
“ I won’t go. I’m staying with you. My dad would never respect me if I walked away.”
“ But?”
“ Ask her if we can kill it.”
“ Burn it,” Donna thought.
“ She says to burn it.”
“ Then that’s what we’ll do.” Glenna crossed her arms. “You’re almost out of gas.”
“ Five miles to the next town.” He checked the gauge. “We’ll get gas there. You’ll have to do it. I can’t be seen like this.” He was having trouble keeping his eyes open. He thought about his wife and Kohler. Whoever said life was fair? His thoughts pierced his heart.
“ There it is, slow down,” she said.
He tapped the brakes, slowed the car as he took the off ramp on the right. He was sorry to lose the steadying comfort of the big truck that had been leading him through the night. He turned right at the top of the ramp and drove by an all night gas station. It was one of those places where you went inside, paid, then pumped your gas. Nobody trusted anybody anymore.
There was one car at the pumps, a brand new looking yellow Porsche Boxter, and a young teenager pumping gas into it. He saw a girl in the car. Must be bringing her back from a date. She probably had to be in by midnight. Christ, where did a boy take a girl out here? Necking somewhere, probably.
He pulled over and parked in the dark, a little past the station.
“ I’ll pull in when they leave. You’ll have to go in and pay, then pump the gas. I’ll stay in the car.” He handed her two twenties.
Jim watched while the boy finished filling the tank. That car looks like it can fly, he thought. Boy probably has rich parents. It was the kind of car every teenage kid wanted. The boy replaced the pump when he finished, got back in the Boxter, started it and Jim heard the unmistakable rumble of a car that was more at home at a hundred on the highway than thirty in the city.
He envied the kid. Then he saw the red lights in the rear view mirror. He shut the engine off.
“ Now what?” she asked.
He reached into the side pocket of Turnbull’s filthy jacket and withdrew the eye patch. Which eye, he thought, the left or the right? Have to take a chance. He slipped it on and covered the left eye.
“ Right eye,” Donna thought, and he moved the patch over.
“ Step out of the car please.” An amplified voice said from the police car.
Glenna opened her door, stepped out and was caught in the spotlight. Her long curly hair caught the light rays giving her an angelic appearance. He blinked and his heart fluttered. She was stunning. He opened his door, without taking his eyes off of her, and hesitated. He had to think of something to say. Would Eddie’s license work? Would it fool a pair of small town cops? How to explain his appearance? He was in the shit now, both figuratively and factually. He spent another five seconds drinking in her face, smiled, then slid out of the car.
He felt the spot moving from her to where he stood. In another instant the light that made her glow would rake over him and his filthy appearance and it would be all over. He had no story to explain away how he looked. He might as well just call it quits. He was too old to be running around like a TV private investigator bent on revenge. Better to give up, get a warm bed in a quiet jail, and sleep. Let the authorities handle it.
He started to raise his hands, but the Boxter squealed out of the gas station before the light played over him, rear wheels smoking like a dragster’s, the roaring engine cutting up the night. The car slid out of the driveway onto the access road, laying a hundred foot strip of black rubber on the pavement as it shot toward the Interstate and the spotlight stopped its arc.
The police car screamed into life and bolted after the hot rod. In a flash of an instant both pursuer and pursued were out of sight, swallowed up by the Interstate.
“ Let’s get out of here!” Glenna jumped back in the car.
“ We won’t get very far without gas.” He eased himself back in the car, felt the sweat on his palms as he slid his hands over the wheel. It had been a close call. If the youth in the Boxter would have waited a second longer before stomping on the gas, he would have been caught in the spot and he might have intrigued the police more than a spoiled teenager on a hot Friday night.
He started the car, pulled up to a pump. Glenna ran into the office, laid down the forty dollars, came out and pumped the gas. The Explorer ate thirty-seven dollars and seventy-six cents worth of fuel. They left without going back for the change.
“ Turn right,” she said. “Let’s see what this town has to offer.”
He looked at her, but said nothing.
“ You need something to wear as soon as possible,” she said. “Oh my gosh, I think I just felt my heart slip.” She turned and locked onto his eyes. “What I’m about to say goes against everything I believe in. I’m a policeman’s daughter. I believe in the law, right and wrong. But difficult times require difficult solutions, so we’re going to see if we can’t get you some clean clothes.”
“ At this time of night?”
“ We’re going to steal them. There, I said it and lightning didn’t strike.”
He turned right and a mile from the Interstate the two lane road turned into the main street of a small town. Two blocks of small shops surrounded by a residential community of less than a thousand. The street was poorly lit, two out of three street lights out, and poorly kept, a third of the stores were vacant. Jim Monday wondered if the town had ever seen better times-was it a dream waiting to happen or a dream that died?
“ Look, there!” Glenna pointed.
He drove slowly past a men’s store called Today’s Man. It was dark, like the rest of the town. The street was bare. Doors were barred. Blinds were drawn over locked windows. A tumbleweed blew across the street in front of them.
They rolled past a used clothing store, Yesterday’s Clothes, on the right, a pharmacy, The Doctor’s Drug Store, on the left, past a shoddy Chinese restaurant, a shoddier Mexican restaurant called Francisco’s, which blared the slogan in faded yellow paint, La Comida Mas Fina, and between Francisco’s and The Handy Laundry and Dry Cleaners, was a small dirt parking lot.
“ Pull in there.” She pointed and he obeyed.
“ We have two choices, the used clothing store or the men’s shop. Me I prefer the used clothing place. Less chance of an alarm.”
“ You’ve done this before?” he asked, nervous.
“ No, never.” She sat and stared at Francisco’s fading yellow sign, like she was looking for courage. After a few seconds she found it. “Scared?” she asked.
“ A little. You?”
“ Terrified. Let’s go.”
They got out of the car, walked half a block back to the used clothing store. He scratched his head, then his side. They stopped, looked in the window, straining to see in through the dark, but all he could see was the reflection of the barren street with its ghostly shadows and it sent a tingling feeling through him.
“ Let’s go around back,” she whispered.
She led the way, squeezing between the store and the Chinese restaurant. He didn’t like being cramped between the two buildings. The weeds and loose dirt crunching under his shoes only served to remind him how tight they were and how much his feet hurt.
“ Look.” He pointed, once they were at the back entrance. “Alarm tape on the windows.”
“ Do you know how to get in without setting off the alarm?” she whispered.
“ No.”
“ Let’s try the men’s store.”
“ Let’s get out of here.” He was in enough trouble, serious trouble. It would be plain stupid to get picked up for breaking and entering in a dump like this. If they got caught, they’d probably be shot on sight. Everybody in this kind of town had a gun and knew how to use it.
“ As long as we’re back here, let’s try the men’s store.” Once again she led and once again he followed, scratching himself along the way.
He felt like he was back in Vietnam, with lice crawling around his body. He itched between his legs. He could feel the dirt underneath his nails and the sweat pouring under his arms. A hot wind blew by and he felt nauseated by his own smell.
He hurried to catch up to Glenna. She was at the back door of Today’s Man by the time he caught up to her, staring at the silver alarm tape around the back window and the sign that said, Protected by Signal Security.
“ Time to go.” This time he took the lead. “I don’t know why I let you talk me into this. We can check into a motel. You can get the rooms, so nobody has to see me, and tomorrow you can go out and simply buy me some clothes.” The answer was obvious, he should have seen it earlier.
“ Of course,” she said, obviously ignoring him, “a laundry. It was staring us straight in the face.” She took off at a slow jog and as much as he wanted to scream at her, to tell her they could get clothes and shoes tomorrow, he didn’t. He followed.
“ No alarm,” she said, panting and staring at the cleaner’s back door, “and no bars on the windows.”
It figured, he thought. Who in their right mind would break into a laundry and dry cleaners in a small town. Can’t wear anybody else’s clothes, because not only does everybody know everybody else, but everybody knows everybody’s clothes as well.
Centered in the top half of the back door was a screen covered sliding window. The screen was weatherbeaten, rusty and worn. It came apart in her hands. She lifted the window, it wasn’t locked. She reached in and unlocked the door from the inside. Not even a dead bolt. Just a simple lock.
“ Come on,” she whispered as she opened the door and went in.
He followed her inside, closing and locking the door after himself. Then the dark room started blinking on and off with the red glowing light coming through the front window from the flashing lights of the police cruiser that pulled up and parked out front.
“ Down!” he said, and they dropped to the floor, hiding behind the counter.
“ It’s that Explorer from earlier.” A not very friendly voice from outside said.
“ What’s it doing here?” A less friendlier voice answered.
“ Dunno.”
“ God that girl was something else, wasn’t she?”
“ She was, did you get a look at the other one?”
“ Couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, but I’m thinking it was a girl.”
“ Give me a break.”
“ Coulda been.”
“ Well, we got ’em now. Where do you suppose they are?”
“ Dunno.”
“ Think they’re robbing the town?”
“ Get serious J.D. If you stole all the money in every store on this street, you might could buy a cup of coffee, if you was lucky. No, more ’an likely they’re meeting someone here in one a the homes next street over. Selling drugs, I’d guess.”
“ Then why park here?”
“ So the car won’t be right in front of the house, stupid.”
“ Oh.”
“ Sometimes I wonder about you, J.D.”
“ What’re we gonna do Mike? Wait till they come back?”
“ No, dummy, wait here. I’m gonna go and call Jeb down to the Mobil and have him tow that Explorer outta here. Ain’t no way them babes are gonna get outta this town on foot. We’ll get ’em all right.”
“ But, Mike, we don’t know for sure they done anything wrong.”
“ Anytime someone sneaks into town in the middle of the night, they’re doing something wrong.”
Jim and Glenna lay side by side on the floor, suffocating in the silence and the smell of manure. An hour later they heard the sounds of a tow truck as it pulled into the parking lot next door. It hooked up to the rented Explorer and towed it away. The police car followed, leaving them basking in the black night, huddled behind the counter, taking shallow breaths and wondering what to do next.
“ I’m going to call my father,” Glenna said after they’d gone, “and let him know I’m okay.” She pulled the phone off the counter and sat on the floor.
“ I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He sat next to her.
“ Relax, I won’t tell him where we are. I just want to let him know that I’m okay, so he doesn’t worry.”
She called information, got the number for the Harris Ranch Inn, then called it.
“ Can I have Hugh Washington’s room please?” she said in a pleasant voice. “Just a second,” she said, after a pause. She cupped her hand over the phone and said to Jim, “He’s not there. Must still be tied up with the local cops. They want to know if I want to leave a message. I want my father to know I’m with you, but I don’t want to mention your name.”
“ Say you’re playing Monopoly with a friend.”
“ I don’t understand?”
“ Your father will.”
She removed her hand from the mouthpiece.
“ This is his daughter, remember me? Please tell him I went out to play Monopoly with a friend and that I’m okay.” Then she hung up.
“ That cop was right about one thing,” Glenna said in a weak whisper. “Ain’t no way we can walk out of here without getting caught.” Then she shut up as the flashing lights went by and she stifled a scream as something ran across her bare arm in the dark.