“Me? I didn’t—”
“Don’t hand me that shit. I saw how you were looking at them. You wanted something to happen.”
“I just wanted a beer, Dude, that’s all.”
“Yeah, right.”
“And now look at us. No beer, no music, no…” Larry looked at Bree, smiling.
“No what?” she said.
“Nothing.”
Zweitic pulled up to a red light. “We could go back, you know. Those guys are probably long gone by now.”
“Tell you what,” Bryan said. “Drop us back at the hotel and you two morons can do whatever the hell you want.”
“I’m hungry,” Bree said. “Let’s get something to eat.”
The car pulled forward, and Larry said, “How about this: Let’s find a liquor store, cop some Rock. Then we’ll get something to eat on the way back to the Clairton, maybe toast that joint on the way.”
“There’s a liquor store right there,” Zweitic said. He bumped his turn signal arm, slowed down and hung a right into the parking lot of an A B C Liquor Store. Then he and Larry went inside while Bryan and Bree stayed in the car.
“I thought you were a goner,” Bryan said,
“Yeah, me too,” Bree said, squinting her eyes as headlights washed across her window. “Thank God for that biker, huh?”
“Yeah.” Bryan felt responsible for what happened, even though he knew it wasn’t his fault—she was here with Larry, but neither would have been here if it wasn’t for Bryan. They’d be back in Charlotte, and Bryan would never have left the hotel. He’d be in the bar, sucking down drinks with Graham Greystone, or just plain sucking up to Rick Greaton. Either way, none of this would’ve happened.
“Did you see the way your pal handled those guys? Two of ‘em like they were a couple of twelve-year-olds. Like Steven Segal or somebody.”
Bryan chuckled. “No shit,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it.”
“Ha! Neither could they!”
“Especially Billy-boy,” Bryan said, and they both laughed.
Then Bree said, “Why’d he have to key that truck anyway? Why’d he have to park there at all? It’s like he was looking for trouble, like Snake and his buncha retards. All he had to do was deny it like he said he was going to in the first place, but nooo; he had to break bad on their asses.”
“It turned out okay.”
“Easy for you to say.” Bree ran a finger across her throat, and Bryan winced.
“I’m just saying, it could’ve been a lot worse.”
“No shit, Einstein. What if they’d pulled out a gun and started blastin’ our asses? You ever watch the friggin’ news? That kinda shit happens every other day where we come from, probably every day down here!”
“Christ, calm down. A moment ago you were laughing about it.”
“Well, excuse me if I seem a little emotional, but I JUST HAD A GODDAMN KNIFE PUT TO MY THROAT, YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKER!” Bree’s voice cracked on ‘motherfucker’, and she started to cry.
“Gee, I… I’m sorry. I didn’t… I… don’t…” Bryan saw Larry and Zweitic through the liquor store’s plate-glass window, Larry carrying a case of beer in his outstretched hands, Zweitic with a bag of ice under his left arm, his right hand gripping a Styrofoam cooler. Bryan wished they would hurry the hell up.
Bree sniffed a couple of times while dabbing her eyes with a piece of her blouse.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just feel a little… crazy.”
“Hey, you have every right to.” Bryan shrugged. “I probably would’ve dropped dead if it happened to me. I almost fainted when—”
Bree giggled. “You should’ve seen your face when that guy rushed you. I thought your eyes were gonna pop outa your head.” She giggled again, and then started howling with laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
Bryan looked up.
“His face when that guy jumped him,” Bree said, starting to calm down a little.
Bryan thought about firing something back, but he let it go, because if anyone deserved to go a little crazy tonight, it was Bree.
“Aw, he did all right,” Larry said, gripping the ice chest with both hands, holding it level in front of his waist while Zweitic opened the door and sat two six-packs in the floorboard. Leaving the door open, Zweitic led Larry to the rear of the car, opening the trunk and slamming it shut after Larry had stowed the cooler away.
Once inside the car, Larry twisted the cap off a beer and turned in his seat. “Here ya go.”
“I’ll wait ‘til we eat,” Bryan told him.
“Yeah,” Bree said. “Me, too.”
* * *
They backtracked their way to the Krystal, which was packed. Bryan recognized several people from the bar, and hoped like hell nobody recognized them. Somebody said, “Busted his fuckin’ knee”, and Bryan flinched. Somebody else said, “Served the pricks right” and he felt a little better.
Bryan and Bree stood behind Larry and Zweitic in front of two cash registers, in a line four or five deep. A mother and two kids with Mouseketeer ears stood beside them. Behind them, a man in tan shorts and a light blue tank-top stood yawning, a thin guy with heavy lids that drooped over his bloodshot eyes. His black hair looked wind-blown, as if he’d driven a great distance with the windows rolled down. Bryan wondered if he had just gotten off the road and checked into a motel just in time for his hungry family to send him out for food, or if they were simply waiting in the car.
When they stepped up to the counter, a pretty young girl took Larry’s order. She had short, ash-blonde hair, stylishly cut, and light brown eyes—Bryan wondered what she was doing here, of all places. She was grinning, her wide eyes sweeping over the crowd. Bryan thought she must like seeing all the weirdoes straggling through here in the middle of the night. She punched in the order as a guy staggered past Bryan and Zweitic, holding a cardboard container of french-fries, carrying with him a strong smell of cigarettes and alcohol as he leaned over the counter.
“Hey,” he grumbled at the cashier. “These fries are cold.”
“Sir?” she said, as if she didn’t understand him, or didn’t believe he had actually said it.
“These fries are cold!”
“Them fries ain’t cold!” someone shouted from the kitchen. It was the voice of a middle-aged black woman. This Bryan knew because her face appeared behind a row of staged food containers, sweat dripping down her forehead as she scowled out from her workstation.
“My ass!” the swaggering drunk said.
Smiling, the young girl grabbed a container of fries. “Here you go, sir,” she said. “Sorry about that.”
“You too drunk to know the difference—”
A couple of people snickered.
“—Dumbass Cracker!”
Several laughed.
“Ya fuckin’ black baboon!” the drunk shouted, and then fired the fries at the woman, the crowd roaring as the container smacked dead-center off her forehead.
“Bulls-eye!” somebody shouted, while somebody else called out, “Nigger!”
The drunk took a backward step, turning and smiling as he stood in front of Bryan, nodding his head like he had done something to be proud of, while the cashier placed a bag of food in front of Larry and the fry cook came around the counter, her face twisted into a raging sneer.
“You wanta play, motherfucker?” she said. “I’ll play with you!”
The guy turned and the cook swung a pot at him; he jumped sideways and a stream of what could only have been boiling-hot french-fry grease rushed toward Bryan, a few drops scalding his shoulder as Zweitic pushed him and an agonized howl rose up from behind them, Bryan turning to see the family man screaming and clutching his face, howling through the sizzling and blistered flesh that leaked through his fingers onto his light blue tank-top.
“GOD!” he yelled.
“OH GOD!” he shrieked.
He removed his hands and steaming folds of skin went with them, leaving a patch of b
ubbling red slime where his face should have been while the crowd backed quickly away, several of them running for the door as a woman dropped to her knees, vomiting all over herself as Bree, who had fallen to the floor, scrabbled backward like a rattlesnake was after her and Zweitic took off for the exit.
Larry had a confused look of bemusement on his face, as if he didn’t know what was going on. But he had to know because he’d watched the entire event unfold. He picked up his food, stepped over to Bree and pulled her to her feet, looked over at Bryan and nodded at the door.
Bryan, his shoulder on fire, ran to the counter and grabbed a Coke, pried off the lid and grabbed a handful of ice, quickly pressing it to the scalded spot on his shoulder, horrified screams and that wretched howl filling the air behind him as he clutched the neck of his t-shirt, pulled it down and saw three tiny blisters rising up on his skin. He took one last look at the horrific creature squirming on the floor, and then followed Larry and Bree out into the parking lot, where Zweitic waited in the car.
Larry jumped in the front and Bryan and Bree took their places in the back, and Zweitic hauled ass through the parking lot. They made their way back to the bar they’d been run off from, and then navigated the roadways until they found themselves heading back to I-4.
Larry twisted open a beer, guzzled a mouthful and flipped the lid out the window, reached into the bag and pulled out a small, square-shaped burger, took a bite and chewed it, and then pulled out another and offered it to Bree, who scowled at him.
“What?” he said.
“Pig,” she muttered, and looked away from him.
“What’d I do?”
“How can you eat that?”
“I’m starving, Bree. What do you want me to do, forego food? For what? I didn’t fling boiling oil on anybody. I didn’t do anything, except get our asses outa there before the cops showed up.”
“He’s right,” Zweitic said. “We didn’t do anything wrong. And I’m hungry as hell.” He reached into the bag and pulled out a cardboard Krystal container, extracted the burger and started wolfing it down.
“I don’t believe this,” Bryan said, leaning forward and snagging a couple of burgers, while Johnny Z went back for seconds. He took a bite, trying not to think of that poor, miserably deformed creature while he chewed. His stomach squirmed, but he forced the food down anyway. The second bite went down much easier. Soon he was tearing into the second burger.
Larry twisted the cap off a beer and handed it back to Bryan. “We can get in some shit, can’t we?”
Bryan gave his head a rueful shake.
“No fucking shit,” Bree said, then, “I’m sorry, Larry. Really, I am. You’re not a pig. I’m just… well…”
Smiling, Larry said, “Don’t worry about it. We’re all a little edgy, who wouldn’t be?” He lifted the bag over the seat. “Here, eat something. You’ve got to be hungry.”
And Bree did. She pulled out a couple of burgers and a container of fries. Larry handed her a beer and she took that as well. Soon they were on the Orange Blossom Trail, heading for I-4, each with a beer and a burger.
“I never did talk to anyone at Harrow House.”
Zweitic’s eyes found Bryan in the rearview mirror. “I know,” he said.
“I feel like a real ass. You saved… that could’ve been me writhing on the floor… If you hadn’t—”
“Don’t sweat it, Dude. You’d have done the same for me.” Zweitic took another drink of beer, slipping the bottle between his legs as he pulled onto the interstate. “Don’t sweat Harrow, either,” he said. “It’ll all work out in the long run.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Rick Greaton stopped, put his hand on the wall and let the wall support him.
“Steady, old fellow,” he said to the wall. “One of us is tilting.”
He wanted to lie down for a while—not long, just until the spinning slowed a bit. How much booze had he downed, anyway? Not enough to forget Graham Greystone’s scathing indictment, or the humiliation of looking like a fool when that Harrow House prick walked away in the middle of Rick’s pitch. That’s how far he had sunk: kissing the ass of some bottom of the barrel publishing house’s third-rate huckster, who obviously didn’t think enough of The Great Rick Greaton to give him the time of day. So he’d sat in the bar, gobbling up gin and tonics like a sun-parched camel. And why not? It wasn’t like he had pressing business. He didn’t have any business at all, other than listening to that moronic bimbo insult the intelligence of damn near every person who had stopped by for an autograph or to say hello. At least she kept the booze flowing, not to mention footing the bill for bringing him to this disappointing venue. So much booze, Rick felt like he was floating in it. His tongue was thick, his bloodshot eyes barely open.
He stood up straight, and somebody said, “Hiya, Rick.”
Rick turned to see a couple of guys walking hand in hand down the hallway, toward the lobby. He looked at his own hand, at the palm still pressed against the wall, and for a moment wondered what the hell it was doing there. Then he looked up at the swirling ceiling tiles and remembered he was on his way to his room, because he’d had way too much to drink and he needed to lie down, to rest a moment before making his way to the parties. He should stay in his room, pile into bed and pass out—God knows he had enough booze in him to fell a rhino. He wanted to call his wife back home in California, who was probably sitting near a telephone hoping he would call. But he couldn’t, because one or two slurred words was all it would take for her to know he had broken his promise to curtail the drinking before it killed him—killed them. And he was killing them, day by depressing day. He knew she deserved better than this, deserved better than him, and he wished he could summon the strength to end it once and for all so she wouldn’t have to watch their lives crumble to dust.
But he wouldn’t.
He couldn’t.
He would lie down for a moment, and then go to whatever shit-hole of a party he could find, so he could grovel at the feet of some undeserving publishing house prick, so he could suck up to a bunch of talentless hacks, just in case one of them might feel sorry enough to ‘put in a good word’, even though he knew those jealous bastards wouldn’t even think of doing it—and the night would end with The Great Rick Greaton staring up at the ceiling, wondering why he didn’t just blow his own brains out.
Rick straightened up and lumbered along the hallway, to the elevator, where he punched a button and waited for the door to whoosh open.
He stood there, thinking, I’ve still got that novel at Bantam. They haven’t rejected it yet. Still got the novella working.
The elevator chimed and the doors came open, and Rick took a staggering step inside.
“Hiya, Rick.”
Rick turned. “Oh, hi, umm.” He pointed his finger, snapping it a couple of times as the doors slid shut. “Your, uh… that guy… uh.”
“Yeah,” the guy said, chuckling as Rick pressed the button for the tenth floor. “That’s me, all right.”
As the elevator steadily rose, Rick regarded his newfound traveling companion, trying to place him, but with all he’d had to drink he couldn’t. The bar? The dealer’s room? Maybe he had noticed him at that dreadful question and answer session Crabtree was involved in.
Sure, that’s it.
The floor display ticked off: seven… eight…
“What’d you shay‘ur name was?”
Nine…
“You on the top floor, too?”
Ten… The elevator chimed and the doors slid open.
“Nah,” the guy said as Rick stepped into the hallway. “Just thought I might want to see what my money paid for.”
Rick frowned, turning as he said, “Huh?”
“Come to Horrorcon…your talent demands it. Your fans demand it!”
Rick gasped. “I’ll be a shum’a bitch,” he said, and the kid laughed.
“Told you I’d see you here, didn’t I?”
“I’ll be damned,” Rick said,
as he took a cumbrous step forward, and then staggered sideways down the hall.
His benefactor, right on his tail, said, “What? Did you think Dracula’s favorite sow brought you out here?”
“I shursh hell did,” Rick said, and then gave his head a disgusted shake, because he’d spent the whole goddamn night listening to her run off at the mouth. For what? For nothing!
Rick stopped. Fumbling in his pocket a moment, he pulled out a keycard, pushed it toward its slot and missed, held a hand over one of his eyes and slid the card home. Red lights blinked green and Rick tugged the door open. Then he turned and frowned.
“What?” he said. “You wanta see my room?”
“Well, I was hoping you might turn me on to a book… maybe sign it?”
“Aw, hell,” Rick said. “That’s the least I can do. C’mon in.”
He walked inside and the kid followed. The door closed behind them, and Rick said, “What’d you say your name was?”
“Red.”
“This way, Ed.” Greaton led him through the suite, down the steps to a recessed sitting area, dimly lit by a small lamp on an end table that sat across from a twenty-seven inch Sony television housed within a polished mahogany armoire, which stood against the wall on the far side of the room. Rick’s laptop computer sat on the small, glass-topped coffee table.
“Make yourself at home,” he said. On his way back up the stairs, he grabbed a small carryon bag, lifted it and set it on the bed, rummaging through it a moment before pulling out a book.
He returned to the sitting area to find the balcony doors open, a gentle breeze ruffling the floor-length Venetian blinds as the guy leaned out over the wrought-iron railing.
“What’re you doing out here?” Rick said, as he stepped onto the porch.
Darkness shrouded the grounds in back of the hotel; moonlight filtering through the early morning fog reflected off the glistening black surface of the lake.
“It was a mistake, a simple mistake. The biggest mistake of Joey’s life.”
Killercon Page 24