“Gimme the smoke, ése,” Tony said, reaching across the cooler, tapping Bobby’s arm.
“I just got it started, fool. All I got was paper. Let me get some weed first, bitch. And don’t call me ése.”
“Bitch this, bitch,” Tony said, grabbing his crotch again and watching his friend hit on the joint. He tapped Bobby on the arm again. “Pass the joint, bitch!”
Bobby leaned away from his friend and sucked longer on the thin marijuana cigarette, just to piss Tony off. He fought off a cough; small wisps leaked from his nostrils as he finally passed the joint to Tony.
“See, bitch,” Tony said, as he took the joint and scowled. “You took too much, ése. Man, I don’t know why I share my weed with you. You’re a fat weed hog, bitch.”
Bobby coughed out his hit and took a pull from his Corona to douse the fire in his throat. Still coughing, he said, “Bitch, your weed? I bought this weed, bitch. And don’t call me ése, bitch.”
Tony considered that for a moment, then said, passing the joint back, “Oh yeah. That’s right, you did buy it. Bitch.”
They looked at each other and started laughing; a stoners’ laugh, hard and uncontrollable, so hard they fell out of their chairs into the sand where they rolled onto their backs and laughed at the moon and the stars until side cramps forced them to stop. Wiping tears from their bloodshot eyes, they righted their chairs and resumed their positions of importance on opposite sides of the cooler.
The joint got lost in the sand, but they had more. They finished their beers at the same time, and, after scoring direct hits in the water, popped open fresh ones. Halfway through their fourth beer, they opened a bag of Doritos and ate with gusto, spilling crumbs onto their shirts, staining their fingers with red powdery seasonings.
The next hour progressed in much the same way: they smoked weed, drank beer, insulted each other about their common lack of skill in basketball, and bragged about imaginary conquests over the opposite sex. The empty Doritos bag disappeared into the canal and they each threw a bottle at it as it floated downstream, missing by yards. A new bag of chips, different flavor, was opened, and they resumed their feast, this time staining their fingers green.
After Bobby finished his seventh beer, he fought the chair for his fat ass and got up, lurching to his feet, staggering forward, almost losing his balance.
“I gotta piss, bro. Wanna help me? The doctor told me not to lift anything heavy.” Bobby laughed and zigzagged down the canal bank, working at his fly, trying to keep his balance.
“Shit, bitch, you’re dick ain’t heavy. You got a little boy dick, bitch. How many times you gonna use that joke, anyway? I heard it a hundred times, bitch. Get a new joke.”
Bobby grunted as he shot a stream of hot smelly urine into the canal. “Damn, that feels good. Hey, bro, there’s nothing like taking a piss when you really need to, aye bitch?”
“Shut up, bitch. Don’t talk to me when you got your dick in your hand.” Tony thought about what he’d just said and reflected on how they would share joints after Bobby had finished. Had Bobby even been inclined, there was no sink to wash up in.
Bobby laughed again and his stream shot further out over the black water. He swung his penis from side to side. “Hey, bro, I’m a sprinkler.” He laughed some more, almost tottering into the canal.
Tony picked up the baggie with the joints, took one out and fired it up, cupping his hands to hide the flame. He took a deep drag and kept his eye on Bobby, who was still doing his sprinkler imitation. If he was lucky, he could get three or four hits before Bobby came back and took the joint away. Bobby had an enormous bladder that he let fill to bursting before relieving himself; he could piss for minutes, like a cow.
Tony blew the first hit out too quickly and was sucking on the joint again when he saw, in the bright moonlight, something big and black come out of the water, rising ten feet above the canal. A flash of silver, streaks of it, and the top of the black thing gaped open. Bobby, the human sprinkler, had also seen it come out of the water and was looking up at it when it struck. It came down over the top of Bobby and bit him in half.
With a slight twist of its head, it sank into the canal, making a soft splash.
Tony watched it disappear, then looked back at Bobby. What was left of him stood upright for a few moments, like a pants mannequin in a department store, before falling in slow motion back into the sand. His penis, still hanging from his pants like a wagging tongue, flopped over, still squirting; the urine had turned to blood.
Tony screamed “Bitch!” and shot out of his chair, knocking it down and spilling his beer. Confused and panicky, he ran down the canal bank, close to the water, past Bobby’s corpse, shouting “Bitch! Bitch!”
He sprinted fifty feet, his muscles fueled by adrenaline, heard a splash, stopped and turned his head, whispered “Bitch.” Something moved at the edge of the canal: a hand floated by, pushed by the swift current. A gaping mouth came out of the water and the hand disappeared. The black thing undulated through the water before it vanished.
Frozen by fear, Tony’s mouth, the only part of him that would move, was busy producing a series of Bitch! Bitch! sounds as he stared at the black water.
The thing reappeared, rising up from the water again, twenty feet to Tony’s left. It opened its mouth, showing the long silver teeth that sparkled, reflecting moon and starlight.
Tony’s bladder released and he realized he had made a mistake running by the canal.
He shouted “Bitch!” at the creature and backed away, toward the field behind Bobby’s house, then fell back and tumbled off the canal bank into the weeds and trash. Jumping to his feet, he shouted “Bitch!” and ran through the field, sing-songing bitch-bitch, bitch-bitch, bitch-bitch.
Halfway to Bobby’s house, he chanced a look over his shoulder, expecting to see the creature following him, slithering through the tall weeds and dry grass. It was there alright, but not in the field; it had moved back to where Tony and Bobby had been partying. He stopped and stared, waiting to see what the creature would do. “Bitch!” he shouted at it. He panted and hopped from foot-to-foot, ready to go if it made a move in his direction. He could have sworn it was looking at him, but couldn’t be sure in the dark.
“Bitch!” he said, panting and hopping, trying to catch his breath. His heart raced and threatened to burst from his chest. The creature bent down, slowly, as if deliberately, and lifted the remaining half of Bobby in its powerful jaws; the feet and ankles sticking out like chopsticks. It bit down, dropping Bobby’s legs to the ground, and sank into the canal.
“Bitch ate Bobby’s ass!” Tony yelled to no one. “Bitch ate Bobby’s ass!”
He turned and ran through the field, thinking he might just have enough time to get away before the bitch came after him.
Chapter 6
“Oh no! Oh no! Look out! Look out! It’s coming! Run! Get away from here! Grab the children and run!”
The shouting cut through the thick fog of sleep blanketing Sandra Jensen’s brain, dragging her into consciousness. At first, the loud voice tried to insert itself into her dream, and she struggled to make sense of it. Had she fallen asleep with the TV on? Were the neighbors fighting again?
She sat up and tried to open her eyes. She felt drugged.
“Oh God, no!”
The loud voice belonged to a man, and he was next to her, in her bed. She struggled to think, to remember what she had done last night, why she had brought a man home.
She got an eye open, and knew immediately she wasn’t in her own bed.
“Run! We’ve all got to run!”
The voice was familiar. She turned to look, the joints in her neck creaked, and saw Detective Lawless, from work. What in the hell am I doing in Detective Lawless’s bed?
Then she remembered the restaurant, the wine, dinner, and she had gone home with him. Then she remembered what they’d done in bed and she smiled, opening her other eye. Who would have thought he would be like that? Detective Lawless?
“Look, look what’s it’s done! Oh! Oh sweet Mary!”
He kicked and flailed his legs as if running from whatever monster frequented his dreams. A sharp kick to the shin convinced her to wake him up. She shook him by the shoulder and said, in a soft voice, “Danny. Danny. Wake up. You’re dreaming.”
Danny was not interested in waking up.
“Oh Lord! The children, the children!”
He flailed and kicked, striking her shin again. That one will bruise. She moved to a kneeling position by the head of the bed and shook him harder.
It took two minutes of shaking and calling his name to break the stranglehold of his dream. When he finally woke up, he was wide-eyed and terrified. He stared at her without blinking and with such a look that she thought he was still caught in the dream, watching, waiting for some new horror to unfold. Then he blinked and looked at her bare breasts. She glanced at the alarm clock next to the bed: 5:07.
“You had your nightmare again,” she told him.
He got out of bed, naked, without a word, and padded to the bathroom. She could hear the facet running. When he returned his face was dripping wet, but he looked awake and sat on the end of the bed, and ran his fingers through his hair.
“Was it the dream?” she asked.
“Yes.” His voice was throaty.
“Can you remember any of it?”
“It’s almost gone now.” He stared at the window, not really looking at it, but trying to see through the thick cloud of his waking consciousness, chasing the final wisps of his dream. “There were children, a lot of them. It was like, they were somewhere they should have been safe.”
“A school?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe. It would make sense.”
“Why were you there?”
“I was trying to warn them, warn the adults who were supposed to take care of them. At first no one would listen. They looked at me like I was crazy.”
He glanced at her, suddenly remembering the night before, where they had met, what they had done. She had pulled a sheet over her breasts and he thought, after everything they’d done the night before, what was there to be modest about?
“You were shouting ‘It’s coming.’ Do you remember what ‘it’ is?”
“Something terrible was coming,” he said. “Something terrible is coming. I can feel it.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know, but I’d bet from everything that’s been happening the past few days, it’s already here. And I think I know where it is.”
The air in the room chilled. She pulled the sheet up to her neck and looked at the window, half expecting to see snow flurries blowing in from outside. She didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to know, but found herself asking anyway: “Where?”
“There’s something in the canals.”
She shivered. “What do you think it is?”
It was his turn to feel the cold. He crawled into bed and pulled the covers over him, turned on his side, propped his head on a hand and looked at her. “It’s gotta be some kind of giant snake. I think it’s what killed Weston and Sanchez.”
She looked confused. “Giant snake?”
He was wide awake now. “Think about it, think about everything. The way the two men were killed. They were bitten. Everyone that saw the injuries thought that, but no one had the guts to say it.”
She nodded.
“Second is the foreign DNA, the ‘almost reptilian’ DNA, found on Sanchez. The coroner is running tests on Weston, and I’ll bet you they’ll find the same thing.”
She laid on her back and stared at the ceiling.
Lawless continued. “Then there’s the hallucination thing that happened to me in the MID building. More snakes.”
“And the premonition,” she added, still shivering, unable to get warm. “It’s so creepy.”
He turned on his back and stared at the ceiling with her.
They were quiet for a few minutes. His thoughts drifted from snakes to deputy Sandra Jensen, lying next to him in his bed, naked.
“Do you know how many departmental regulations we violated last night?” he asked.
She giggled, glad to talk about something different, and turned to face him. “How many?”
“Four.”
“Really? You counted?” she said, feigning surprise.
“Well, maybe not four. At least two.”
“You gonna turn us in, Lawless? Tell the Sheriff what we did?”
“You think Sheriff Wisehart would care?”
“It’s election year, he might. Did he ever work the streets or drive patrol?”
“More like rode patrol. I think they were still on horseback when he joined the force.”
“He does seem old, doesn’t he?”
They chuckled at their private joke. Then she said, “Hey, Lawless. You never told me about your premonition last night.”
“Yes I did. It was about the canal looking like a snake, remember? How much wine did you drink, anyway?”
“Funny. I noticed someone kept my glass full all night.”
“Just being a gentleman.”
“Gentleman my ass. Not the snake premonition, the one you had at the table when you looked like you were having an epileptic attack. You said I was in it.”
“Oh, that one. I don’t need to tell you about it.”
“Why not? You said you would.”
“You already know. It happened last night.”
She got his meaning and flashed him a smile as big as the Grand Canyon. “You saw us in bed? You pervert!”
“Hey, I don’t control them. They just happen.”
He turned to face her and fell into her eyes, reached for her waist and said, “Did I say it all came true last night? I meant to say it only partially came true.”
“Oh really? There’s more?”
He threw the covers off her and kissed her hip, where his hand had been. “There’s more, alright.”
She moaned, turned onto her back and said, “You’re sure perky for an old guy.”
After making love, they showered. While he shaved, she made coffee and brought two cups into the bedroom.
He was finishing up in the bathroom when she called out, “Hey, Lawless. What’s with the shoes? You got more shoes than a chick.”
“Yeah. So what?”
After a moment, she said, “Pretty cool shoe racks. You make these yourself?”
“No. Cost me five hundred bucks to have them put in.”
He came into the room in underwear and a T-shirt; she wore a shirt she had pulled out of his closet, as if it was natural for her to do so. He took the coffee from her and sat in a chair, looking at her.
“So how come you got so many shoes?”
“I like shoes.”
“No shit. I need some black pumps, got any in size eight-and-a-half?”
“I might.” He waited to see what else she would say.
She said, “I hear Willie Brown has a hundred suits.”
Willie Brown, a long time California politician known for being a classy dresser, probably didn’t have a hundred suits, but he had dozens.
“I heard that when he buys new ones he donates the old ones to the Salvation Army, or something, so he can get a tax write-off. So the Salvation Army has like, thousand-dollar suits that are practically brand new and they sell them for a hundred bucks. You got to be his size, though.”
And that was it. He’s got eighty-two pairs of shoes in a custom shoe rack and Willie Brown had a hundred suits. So what.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Forty-one. How old are you?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Forty-one,” she repeated to herself, as she sipped from her mug. She walked over to where he was sitting and put her mug down, standing close to him. The shirt fell open, he smiled, sat his mug down next to hers.
“You’re gonna kill me,” he said, as she pushed him onto the bed.
Afterward, they were laying in b
ed, his head resting on her stomach.
“You’re like the Energizer Bunny,” she said. “You just keep going and going. Last night I thought I was gonna die.”
He smiled, remembering last night again, wondering how he’d managed to do all that, and his cell phone chirped. He looked at the clock, almost seven; he remembered he was supposed meet the divers at eight.
“Ah,” he said. “Capital punishment for whoever invented the cell phone.” He went off to look for it, found it in his jacket on the back of a chair in the living room. A muffled conversation, then he walked back into the bedroom, his face full of bad news.
“There’s been another killing by the canals.”
Nothing else was said about his shoes or their age difference. He never got a chance to ask her if she really went to the restaurant last night to meet someone, and if so, was it a man. They didn’t talk about their childhoods, family, or how they lost their virginity. He didn’t ask if she had a boyfriend. She wanted to know, but didn’t ask, how he could be such a good lover when he was such a loner.
They didn’t say anything to each other after that phone call; it was time to go to work. Somehow, though, they knew she would be working with him and that he wouldn’t have to go it alone. And that was right, they knew it was right.
Lawless got to the Paradise Lateral at a quarter to eight, whistling, looking and feeling better than he had in anyone’s recent memory. He had even found a clean, pressed jacket in the back of the closet.
A crowd had assembled. He saw three patrol cars parked in the field and followed their tracks through the dry grass, hoping his car wouldn’t get caught in a hole or blow a tire. McCain and Cruff were there, keeping the crowd at bay. He guessed there were thirty people looking at the canal; bad news travels fast.
Sgt. Ralph Tingey stood on the canal bank, writing on a notepad. Tingey saw Lawless and waved him over. Ralph looked bad.
“Jesus, Danny,” Tingey said. “Thank God you’re here.”
Tingey stood five feet from what appeared to be two human legs, lying at a forty-five-degree angle to each other, two feet from the canal; each leg was cut mid-point between the foot and knee. The feet were covered by an unbranded pair of white tennis shoes, probably from Wal-Mart. The legs wore jeans. Red meat and white bone poked out from the sheared end of the jeans and blood had soaked into the sand at the cut-off end of the legs, turning it black. Flies had found the gore and were feasting.
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