Strays

by Matthew Krause

  When Ryan graduated from Mount Tahoma, he believed he would finally be able to kill his past. He spent the summer after commencement lifting weights, and upon turning 18 he was able to tell his father to go to hell when his monthly haircut rolled around. He enrolled in some classes at Tacoma Community College, and he got himself a cheap apartment near campus. He made rent via student loans, but when that wasn’t enough, he took a job working second shift at a warehouse on the Sea-Tac Strip about a mile south of the airport. By second semester at TCC, he was barely making a 2.0, and the warehouse wanted to take him on fulltime. He liked the warehouse and liked that in this world he was not just Rhino but “good ol’ Rhino” to his coworkers.

  He dropped out of college.

  The next three years were spent working nights at the warehouse on The Strip and looking for something to do the rest of the time. Hard to say if life was good for “good ol’ Rhino.” He didn’t like his job, but he liked that they let him grow his hair as long as he wanted, and his shift supervisor never complained about his increasing collection of tattoos.

  By the summer of 1986, when Rhino turned 22, his hair was down around his shoulders, and he fancied that he looked a bit like Tom Araya, lead singer of his favorite band Slayer. Damn, but he loved that band! He loved them so much, in fact, that he was going to tattoo the word SLAYER across the front of his neck for all the world to see, but just as he sat down in the chair for the ink artist to go to work across his throat, a vision of Jack came to mind, and he instead opted to replace SLAYER with the words LET’S PLAY. As consolation and in deference to his favorite band, he had the same artist tattoo the best line from his favorite Slayer song across his back in archaic Românese font:

  JESUS KNOWS YOUR SOUL CANNOT BE SAVED.

  Story of my life, thought good ol’ Rhino. Words to live by.

  He never questioned why he always seemed to be alone.

  * * * *

  It was the late summer of 1986 when Rhino first saw the girl wandering about the empty C-store. He spied her in the early hours of a Friday morning, and at first he thought she was a hooker, although she lacked the affected swagger of the best whores on The Strip. Still, it was a week night, and he had been walking up and down The Strip for awhile, wired and edgy after clocking out from his shift at the warehouse. The idea of some female company sounded pretty good at the moment, so he made his proposition directly, and even when she revealed herself to be jail-bait (“Fifteen will get you twenty,” she said), he still couldn’t resist showing her the LET’S PLAY tattoo on his neck in hopes that this would impress her. It did not. If anything, it seemed to freak her out a bit, and the moment she staggered away from him, gagging as if she might vomit, Rhino had a moment of déjà vu.

  He had seen her before. Oh yes, he had seen her.

  It was on one of those flyers that had been splattered all over The Strip, a weird photocopied image of a doe-eyed teenage girl named Sarah Smallhouse, handwritten announcement in black magic marker that she had run away and that there was a reward for information leading to her whereabouts. When Rhino first saw one of the makeshift posters taped to the post of a cross-walk light, a niggling tickle in the back of his head told him he should take it for himself … just in case. As it turned out, his instincts had been correct, for what were the odds that a late-night stroll to combat insomnia would lead him directly to this very girl at this very place and time?

  When he had stolen the flyer two days earlier, he had folded it and placed it in his wallet. Once the girl in the C-store slipped off to the bathroom, he retrieved it to check the face, and sure enough, it was her, Sarah Smallhouse, 15-year-old girl gone missing. The flyer promised a $500 reward for information leading to her whereabouts, and just looking at those numbers again, written in huge fat strokes with the magic marker, gave Rhino a little thrill down his leg.

  He quickly went to the payphone on the front dock, dialed the operator, and placed a collect call to the number that promised the reward. A gruff voice answered. It was thick with the rattle of smoker’s phlegm. The man on the other end identified himself as Bud, “but everybody calls me Big Buddy.” Rhino told Big Buddy what he knew, and he agreed to wait at the C-store, to keep an eye on the girl.

  Even as they spoke, Sarah Smallhouse, terrified and hungry, was slipping away out the back, almost right under his nose.

  Minutes later, as Rhino paced about on the C-store’s dock, an unusual-looking man stepped out of the shadows. He stood a good foot taller than Rhino, and when he first appeared Rhino couldn’t help but notice his heavy black eyes the size of silver dollars. The stranger’s face was bulging in places, misshapen, and Rhino thought that maybe he had some rare form of that elephant man disease he had read about at TCC. There were slits on the face as well that seemed to be oozing something awful, not quite blood but a sort of black phlegmy version the stuff hacked up by chronic smokers. When the malformed freak started walking toward him, Rhino backed against the glass picture window of the C-store and tensed himself for a run.

  “Rhino?” the stranger asked.

  “Yeah, sure. Big Buddy?”

  The freak shook his head. The sagging flesh quivered like melted cheese. The eyes looked like something you saw in a science fiction movie, huge, over-evolved orbs of a space alien but the color of charcoal. When he spoke again, his voice was clearer. “It’s me, Rhino. It’s Jack.” He stepped up onto the dock, pushing that awful visage into the illumination of the store’s fluorescent lights.

  “Whoa,” said Rhino. “What happened to your face?”

  Jack, paused and glanced into the reflective surface of the convex security mirror, which hung at an angle above the payphone. When he saw his own image—strips of skin hanging from his forehead and cheeks, streaks of black blood about his nose, chin, and eyes—he grinned. “Had a little disagreement with someone. Want to see a neat trick?”

  “Sure, I guess.”

  Jack put his hands on his face, covering every inch of tattered, bloody flesh. With one quick swipe, he pressed his hands back. Rhino looked up, astonished, to see a face almost whole, free of scars or splattered blood. Jack repeated the motion, pushing back the drooping flesh and globular lumps, poking with his fingers like a potter modeling clay. At last, he was done, and the friendly smile that Rhino had known since childhood emerged.

  “How’d you do that?”

  Jack ignored his question. “You’re waiting for someone,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re looking for a girl.”

  “That’s right.”

  “She got away, Rhino. Right out from under your now.”

  Rhino stamped the dock and spit. “Dammit.”

  “I know where she is,” Jack assured him. “Let me take you to her.”

  * * * *

  Late the next morning, Rhino came stumbling out of the woods just west of 99. He held his right hand out in front of him to feel his way, and his left hand pressed against his nose, trying to stem the flow of blood. He had intended to flag down a ride on 99, eliciting sympathy from the ground beef mass that was now his face, and perhaps grab a lift to the hospital. He did not expect to find a ride already waiting for him.

  “Hello, Ryan.” Jack stood at the edge of the road, arms crossed, legs spread wide. “Looks like you just lost a fight with a wood-chipper.”

  “Need … a doctor,” Rhino moaned.

  “You do indeed. Let’s get you fixed up, shall we?”

  Rhino had no idea how much time he spent in the ER. Somehow, Jack flagged down a ride and piled Rhino inside, but the pain was so great that parts of this were wiped clean from Rhino’s memory, like someone went to town on his brain with a giant chalkboard eraser. Once he was stabilized, Rhino did remember struggling to fill out forms, waiting in ER, and finally getting a PA to patch up his face. The lacerations on Rhino’s head took multiple stitches, as did the one alongside his right eye that had painfully widened the socket. His nose was reset, and a splint was placed, and a
nurse put some powder in the nostril that burned but nevertheless stopped the bleeding. Small butterfly bandages were applied to hold together the lesser scars on his cheeks and eyebrows, and his face, neck, and chest were cleansed with antiseptic. They gave him some painkillers and let him rest a bit, and the minutes clicked away but Rhino didn’t care.

  At last he was released, and he had the receptionist call him a cab. In the front lobby, he slipped into the gift shop and bought a clean shirt with VMC (for Valley Medical Center) emblazoned on its chest. He changed in the public bathroom. He was all alone, and there was no one to stare at the cool tattoo on his back, and that kind of made him sad. He threw his old and bloodied shirt in the garbage on the way out the revolving doors that led to the ER loading dock.

  He barely remembered the cab ride home.

  He spent the rest of the day popping his painkillers, something called Lortab, and washed them down with a few beers. He called in sick to the warehouse and slept for a very long time. When at last he awoke just after 3:00 a.m., the pain was still there and probably just as bad as ever, but he was kind of getting used to it, and it made him feel a little bad-ass that he was. He took two more Lortab and drank a beer and heated up a frozen pizza in the microwave.

  He did not awaken until sometime after the sun rose on a hazy Saturday morning. His head felt as if it was encased in a giant jar of yogurt, but even through the fog he heard someone rapping on his apartment door. He swung his legs out of bed and staggered through his house to answer it. If he had been more coherent and certainly more cognizant of his surroundings, he might have later reflected that in those last seconds before he turned the lock and swung open his apartment door, he was still just “good ol’ Rhino,” some overfed long-haired leaping gnome working at a warehouse on The Strip and waiting for something to happen. When he answered the door, something finally did happen, and that was the last anyone would see of “good ol’ Rhino.”

  At the very same time, some 300 miles southeast of his apartment, the girl he had seen at the C-store and her mysterious companion who had attacked him in the woods, were arriving at their destination in Pendleton, Oregon.

  * * * *

  “Good morning, sunshine,” Jack said when Rhino swung open the door. Jack had his hands in his pockets, and he was smiling, and those bottomless black eyes—like a shark’s eyes, Rhino realized—seemed to quiver and ripple like pebbles dropped in a pool of oil. “Want you to meet someone.”

  Rhino blinked as Jack stepped back and revealed a small Datsun pickup the color of a Tacoma sky parked in the visitor’s parking spot near Ryan’s front door. The driver-side door of the pickup opened, and out stepped a mountain of a man in a plaid polyester shirt with cheap piping around the chest and ugly white snap-on buttons. His ample hips settled into a brown pair of work pants that hung baggy over his dark, muddy work boots. His jawline was broad, and there was a roll of an extra chin across his neck, and when he smiled (which was more of a scowl like a dog protecting his turf), his teeth were a smoker’s gray and unusually crooked. To Rhino, it looked like he had a model of Stonehenge in his mouth, and in spite of the pain of his broken nose, this thought made him chuckle.

  “Ryan?” the Stonehenge-mouth asked.

  “Rhino, sir.” His voice sounded stuffed and almost effeminate through the splint on his nose.

  “Name’s Big Buddy. What the hell happened to you?”

  “I saw your daughter,” Rhino said, and his voice wheezed as he spoke.

  “Where?” Big Buddy demanded.

  “Yesterday morning in the woods.”

  “She the one who did that to you?”

  “No, sir,” Rhino grunted. “She’s got some freak with her. He got the drop on me.”

  “What kind of freak?” Jack asked.

  Rhino thought. “He was small. Like a little clawed monster or something. I didn’t get a good look at him.”

  “Why not?” Jack’s voice was abrupt, dropping any hint of the soothing tones that had comforted Rhino when they were boys. “Why couldn’t you see it?”

  “It got me from behind,” Rhino wheezed. “Latched onto my head and started biting me.”

  “Little clawed monster,” Jack said. “That’s your story?”

  “Look,” Rhino said with a wet snort. “I don’t know what it was. It felt like some kind of wild animal. It attacked me. Like a rabid raccoon …”

  “Or a cat?” Jack asked. “Do you think it could have been a cat?”

  Rhino considered this and shook his head. “Doubt it.”

  “Think,” Jack said, hissing through his teeth. “I know it’s embarrassing to even think an ordinary house cat might have gotten the better of you, but mark my words, this is no ordinary house cat.”

  “It broke my nose,” Rhino gasped. “Hit me with something hard. How’s a cat do that?”

  “You’d be surprised what this one’s capable of,” Jack replied, shaking his head. “Alas, poor Rhino. I don’t know what to do with you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I sent you to get the girl, a hungry little 15-year-old girl, and you let me down. Now look how worried the girl’s father is, will you? Just look.”

  Rhino looked. Whatever Big Buddy was feeling, it seemed that worry was probably well at the bottom of the list. Old Stonehenge mouth was frowning, and his eyes were so small (and so buried under his untrimmed eyebrows) that they were impossible to read. Still, there was no sign of panic or legitimate concern in that face, only great annoyance.

  Jack crossed his arms and looked at Big Buddy. “Fortunately, I know a few things.”

  “Things like what?” Big Buddy barked

  “Things about the one who is with your daughter,” said Jack. “Things like where he’s taking her.”

  “Who is he?” Big Buddy said with a grimace. “What’s he think he’s going to do with my girl?”

  “I don’t think you want to know that, do you?” Jack glanced back over at Rhino and winked. “But whatever it is, he needs to be stopped, don’t you agree?”

  “I do,” Big Buddy grunted. “So what are we waiting for? Let’s get going. Saddle up.”

  “I can’t go with you,” said Jack. “I have other things to do. But Rhino can.”

  Big Buddy looked at Rhino, wrinkled his nose, and whistled through his teeth. “I don’t need that punk bleeding all over my truck.”

  “The bleeding has stopped,” said Jack. “And if you want to find your little Sarah, you’re going to do it my way.”

  “That’s not how I do things,” Big Buddy said. “You tell me where she is or I’ll—”

  “You'll what?” Jack asked. “I don’t think you want to go there, Buddy. Not if you know what’s good for you.”

  Big Buddy bit his lip and tried to meet Jack’s gaze. He failed miserably, and just for a moment, Rhino was convinced he saw the man’s face start to collapse as he teetered on the edge of being truly beaten. A moment was all it lasted. Big Buddy set his jaw and quickly recovered.

  “What do I need with a punk like that tagging along?”

  “He’s loyal,” said Jack. “Aren’t you loyal, Rhino?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And he has a stake in this too. He wants the thing that attacked him in the woods to get what’s coming to it. Isn’t that right, Rhino?”

  “Yes,” Rhino said. “That’s right.”

  “So we’re on the same page,” Jack said, turning back to Big Buddy. “Aren’t we?”

  Big Buddy looked at Rhino, chewing an arid lower lip with those Stonehenge teeth. “Fine,” he said at last. “The punk can come too. Now tell me where my girl is.”

  Jack grinned and motioned and rolled his eyes heavenward. “I’m sure I don’t know,” he said, and then with a twist of his head toward Rhino: “But he does.”

  Big Buddy looked at Rhino again and fixed him with a stare so awful that the younger man feared he might turn to stone. “Well, spit it out, boy,” Big Buddy said.
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  Rhino offered his hands in an exaggerated shrug and glanced over at Jack for support. Jack just shook his head and laughed.

  “He doesn’t know everything yet,” Jack said. “But it will come to him on the road. One piece at a time.”

  “Just what kind of game are you playing?” Big Buddy growled.

  “I don’t want you leaving without my righthand man,” said Jack, and maybe it was the painkillers, but Rhino felt as tall as a tree right at that moment. “I’ll tell him how to get to your Sarah, but I’ll only tell him one piece of the journey at a time. That way you have to keep him for the duration.”

  Big Buddy snarled, but in the end he threw up his hands.

  “That’s good,” Jack said. He nodded at Big Buddy, then turned back to Rhino, reached through the doorway, and placed a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Go ahead, my friend. Tell him where to go.”

  Rhino thought a moment. He closed his eyes, and all at once it was as if he were above the city, floating above his apartment, over the TCC campus just down the street, looking at a detailed map of the land.

  “Take I-5 south,” he said. “That’s all I’m seeing.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” said Big Buddy. “Saddle up.”

  “Let me get dressed and grab some things.”

  Minutes later, Rhino was settled into the shotgun seat of Big Buddy’s pickup and taking in his surroundings. It was a tiny two-man cab with a cracked and sun-faded dashboard. Foam stuffing was poking out of the narrow bench seats where stitching had worn away, and the ashtray was badly in need of an emptying. Just right then, Rhino was thankful for the broken nose, for it prevented him from taking in the stench of poverty and regret that no doubt hung heavy in this car.

  Buckle up, he thought to himself. This will be your home for the next few hours.

  Convergence

  Once Molly took the wheel, Kyle was able to sleep, at least for awhile. His dreams were for the most part peaceful and steeped in the kind of fantasies that he had entertained when they first started this journey. In most of the dreams, Molly was taking him to some faraway place like a secluded island in the Pacific, where the two of them could spend out their days eating fruit on the beach or playing in the surf. It reminded him a bit of that movie The Blue Lagoon, which he had never seen, but there were certainly plenty of posters and previews for it around the same time the second Star Wars movie came out.