The Suicide Motor Club

by Christopher Buehlman

  Head blow, quite a sharp one

  Her thick, black hair spilled out and Clayton made a soft noise in his throat. There was something Roman about her, something of the gladiatrix, with her scarred nose and cheek and her well-made limbs. He checked the clouds—sun coming, but spotty; one golden trapezoid moving through the woods across the road looked set to miss the motel. The other monsters were already settling back into their lairs, changing rooms so as not to sleep in the ones that had been splashed with gasoline, dragging the fallen in with them; the false Indian was fetching a shovel from Mr. Nixon’s red car, with which he would set to spreading dirt over the blood on the bricks. He would resume his watch when done, and then like as not they would burn this place. And then what?

  Clayton was tempted to walk away now, to take his chances in the light woods. But he had not survived so long by giving in to temptation. Besides, there was the question of the nun. He pulled up her eyelids, the swollen one with difficulty.

  Rare color these eyes never seen the like

  The left pupil was larger than the right.

  “You’ve got yourself a fine concussion,” he told her. “You need a hospital, but not so badly as I need you not to burn us in our stalls.”

  When he saw that the others had gone in to sleep behind their dry-rotten doors, and that the necrophile with the shovel was occupied in filling up a bucket with dirt, he carried the nun toward his own room.

  “Never mind the smell of gasoline—the whole place will burn in minutes if any part catches flame,” he told Judith as he carried her through the door. “A wonder lightning hasn’t done the deed, or perhaps our savior in the courtyard has warded it.”

  As he shouldered the door open, looking down into her insensible face, he became aware of how much they might have resembled a macabre bride and groom.

  “Your father should demand his money back for that wedding,” he told her. He kissed and licked the blood from her face, though it still ran in a stubborn trickle. He knew his spit would stop the blood and help close the wound—this was why bites on living victims closed—but thought it might not be enough for this gash. So he laid her down on his coat and with a sewing needle from his kit held briefly over a match, and with a bit of sage-green thread (to match his vest), he stitched her head while she lay breathing shallow breaths. When his work was done he bit the thread off, then laid her on her side and spooned behind her, one arm binding her, one hand pressed cold against the insulted forehead in lieu of ice. If she woke, he would wake with her and tie her with his belt. If she cried out, he would stop her mouth with his hand. He knew well that she might die of her injury. He yearned to feed from her, but the memory of the Florida woman’s death rose up—he did not wish to test the nun’s fragile health.

  “I promise you nothing, stupid brave thing,” he whispered into her ear, “but that I shall try, mind you try, to stop them from killing you. And if I can, I shall paint your portrait.”

  —

  AN HOUR BEFORE SUNSET A KNOCK WOKE CLAYTON. AT FIRST HE WAS BEWILDERED to feel his chest and arms so warm, even his chin where it rested on a living head, and then he remembered. The knock came again. He uncurled himself from around the injured nun and took up his sunglasses to peer from the window slit. The queer lad Woods stood there, divested of his Stuckey’s feather bonnet, a pile of clouds bulking behind him. The westering sun lit those clouds painfully in Clayton’s eyes, even filtered through his shades, so they might have been pillars of molten ore.

  “Open up,” Woods said. “They want her.”

  “Whom do they want?” he said.

  “The nun.”

  “Well, they shall have none.”

  A pause.

  “Funny. Open up.”

  Now Luther’s voice came through the wall.

  “Do like he says. We need to ask her some things.”

  “She is not yet conscious.”

  “Then he’ll drag her.”

  At his peril, he nearly said but choked those words back.

  There would be no fighting this bunch. He would be a match for any one of them, perhaps two, but certainly not all of them. What they lacked in age and strength they more than made up for in viciousness. He looked at the woman where she slept, admired the handiwork of his stitches. What would she say if she woke and saw him? He remembered the look of terror in her eyes when she glimpsed him on the road, just before he slung her from the truck’s path. He had on several occasions met diurnals who could see through the low-voltage charm all vampires unconsciously ran to hide their killing teeth and present a more pleasant reflection, although that charm wore thin during daylight hours. Would those rare eyes of hers betray him as the corpse he was, even at night?

  “No need for that,” he told the voice behind the wall. “I shall bring her.”

  31

  JUDITH WOKE TO A ROOM FULL OF THE DEAD. DEAD MONSTERS, ALL LOOKING AT her with eyes that shone faintly in the almost-darkness. Just after sunset. She wanted to scream but bit it back. Where was she? She lay on the raw springs of an old bed so rusty she was nearly falling through. Her arms were bound in front of her. She could barely open her right eye and her head throbbed wickedly. Were her clothes wet?

  Monsters.

  The last thing she remembered was an Indian standing outside a van’s window, but not a real Indian—a white Indian with a weak-chinned face. Her head had exploded then and it still hurt. She blinked, water on her eyelashes. They had thrown water on her to wake her.

  The monsters.

  She looked at them now.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” the bald one said.

  Oh God help me it’s him it’s really him they took my boy they took him

  He showed her his teeth, the teeth she had seen that night.

  God give me strength if you don’t what are you for if not now when

  “I need to ask you a few questions,” he said. He leaned close now, his breath stinking of whiskey and blood, and under that engine oil and rotted meat like in a dog’s teeth and the smell of black ants when you crumble them in your fingers. He looked into her eyes. “And you’re going to tell me everything you know.”

  Thou preparest a table for me in the presence of mine enemies

  He drooled and it pooled on one of her bare arms, cold and thick.

  strengthen me god please youre not doing it youre not im still weak

  He showed her the teeth again, and it struck her differently than it did the first time. It was like a bully who kept showing you his fist. A trick. Oh, those teeth had murder in them, she had no doubt about it, but his desire to frighten her had the odd effect of angering her.

  They could just kill me but they want to know things

  O God Shane and Hank and Lettuce they killed them i know it

  Cant think about that yet put it away

  “I have a question, too,” she said, her voice trembling.

  Don’t ask them about Glendon don’t let them know who you are

  The monster raised his eyebrow.

  “Really?” he said. “That’s interesting. You’re an interesting gal.”

  She kept her eyes locked on the deadlamps in the bald one’s face but, peripherally, let her awareness drift to the other monsters now. The tall one who took her boy out of the car, she remembered his cold, long arms, her heels slid up and down a little on the rusty springs with the desire to stomp on his horsy face, to kick those teeth out of his head, to kick his smug, ignorant face until it was nothing.

  “Do you like being what you are?”

  “Open your legs,” he said, staring into her eyes.

  In the presence of mine enemies thou preparest thou preparest

  “Luther,” the smaller blond man with the boyish voice said.

  Evenin’, miss

  Judith stared at the bald one, did not open her legs.
>
  “Huh,” he said. It was the sound a man would make if he watched a dog ride a bicycle.

  She noticed one among those watching her, more frightful than the rest. The ones from the cars had a dead look about them, with their white skin and pronounced veins, but this one. His skin was darker, deader. His cheeks sank in. His eyes burned brighter than theirs.

  I do not remember this one. This one was not there.

  “Luther.”

  “Easy,” Luther said. “Just seein’.”

  He looked Jude in the eye again.

  “Now this is only gonna end one of a couple a’ ways, and some of them ways is easier than others. Easiest of all is you relax your brain and look at me. Fuckin’ look at me. That’s right. You tell me who sent you here so we can go pay them a visit. Tattooed fellow already told us some interesting stuff, but I’d like to know more about that farmhouse and barn. Pennsylvania, right? You happen to see a address?”

  Judith looked him in the eye and said nothing.

  “It’s the damnedest thing,” Luther said. “This pussycat don’t charm.”

  “Let me try,” the Camaro driver said.

  “If I can’t, what makes you think you can?”

  “Let me try.”

  Luther gestured him forward with an open hand, as if inviting a friend to cut in on a dance.

  The smaller blond one sat on the edge of the rusty bed frame, leaned forward, looked into Jude’s eyes. Jude looked away. The other grabbed her chin with a cold, hard hand, pulled her gaze back to his. She moved her eyes away, looked at the very dead one.

  “Shit, I can’t even hook her,” he said, standing up in disgust.

  Judith noticed the very large one with the neck brace now, saw him holding forearms pocked with angry-looking holes. Like he’d been hailed on.

  “We better get on the road,” the tall one said, slicking back his greasy, long hair and securing it with a ball cap.

  How’d you know my name? That his name, too?

  Rob. That one was Rob.

  “Yeah,” the bald one said. “In a minute.”

  Luther Nixon. The Alpha driver.

  He killed my husband.

  The slight one with the James Dean hair was the Beta driver.

  Everyone was here but the woman with the red mouth full of teeth.

  Luther looked at Jude again. He picked up her hands, sticky with blood that had been lapped off, bound with old, damp rope. He showed them to her. Grinned, showing her his teeth again.

  Bully you’re just a damn bully

  “Big hands on you. You know what that means, right?”

  Vulgar damn bully I want to kill you I will

  “Look at them big arms on you, too.”

  You can’t beat them with hate be smart

  “You a farmer’s daughter? Big strong pretty girl, huh? Them arms don’t hurt your looks none yet, but if I let you live, you’d be gonna run to fat. I can tell by them arms.”

  He looked harder into her eyes.

  Trying to off balance me make me mad get into my brain

  “Bet your momma’s got them big ole water wing arms, ain’t she? Let me ask you this: When she flops a flapjack, is there a little wobble after?”

  Can I get into his brain

  “What about your mother?”

  “Her arms was skinny,” Luther said. “Face like a mule, though, and she chawed tobacco. Spat it on me in my crib more than once.”

  Jude felt sweat start dewing on her temples, her palms.

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “How’s that?”

  Judith looked past Luther, through him. She saw a vision of a woman and knew it was true, though it was long ago. She had never seen the past before.

  A slight, pretty woman in a rose print dress

  A washtub on a table and the sun just setting

  a table for me a table in the presence

  “I bet you’re lying.”

  “The fuck do you know about it? Anyway, you ain’t got nothing to bet.”

  Rob laughed.

  “Your momma sang to you at night when you had a fever.”

  “Whores don’t sing.”

  “But your momma did. I’ll bet if you think real hard you can remember how soap smelled when she washed you.”

  Her sincerity goaded Luther.

  “She washed me with a rock.”

  Judith kept looking through him, uncharmable.

  Calm.

  “I bet she bought the best soap she could afford for you. When you were little.”

  Luther snorted.

  “Before you killed anybody.”

  “I was born killin’.”

  “She’d look down at you in the washtub and tell you everything she wanted for you.”

  He pressed his finger on the gash in her forehead, then removed it. She hissed and breathed in. An involuntary tear rolled down her right cheek, but she wouldn’t let herself sob.

  “You got this wrong,” he said. “I get to talk about your momma. Don’t you dare talk about my momma.”

  “She was pretty, wasn’t she?”

  “Shut up,” he said.

  “You make jokes about her . . .”

  “I’m warnin’ you.”

  “. . . because you know it would break her heart . . .”

  Luther slapped her laceration like he was killing a roach.

  She gritted her teeth but spoke.

  “. . . to see what you are now. Do you remember her favorite song?”

  He put his face very close to hers. He grabbed her nipples with hands like pliers and pinched. The tears came and she started to shudder.

  “You can frighten my body,” she said, her voice breaking.

  “I’ll frighten more than your fucking body.”

  “You can’t,” she said. “You already took everything.”

  He’s going to tear them off

  Please god don’t let him it hurts it hurts

  She heard the woman in her head sing and she sang after her, looking Luther in the eye.

  “Sweet angels beckon me away

  Where there’s no more stormy clouds arising.”

  Luther let her breasts go, his mouth hanging open.

  “To sing God’s praise in endless day

  Where there’s no more stormy clouds arising.”

  Luther hit her mouth, hard enough to bloody her lip. The woman in her head went away.

  He picked Judith up, put her over his shoulder. When her head went upside-down all the blood rushed there and she almost blacked out from the pain.

  “Pop the goddamn trunk,” he told the Beta driver, who went before him as he crossed the courtyard with her, past the pool with the dead deer and flowers, past the bloodstained statue of the sword-wielding Christ, past the decaying fighter jet and behind the weedy shell of the greenhouse. The others followed behind. The false Indian and the female came from the greenhouse to see. Jude noticed the van she and the others had ridden in parked near the Camaro, could make no sense of that upside-down van or what it meant for her companions with her screaming head. The Beta driver popped the trunk of his Camaro. Luther threw Judith in and she banged her miserable head again and the floor smelled faintly like chlorine.

  “I don’t know what you imagine I took from you,” he said to her, nodding then at the bag behind her. “But I assure you it was not everything.”

  He slammed the trunk shut, closing her in darkness.

  She could still feel his hard, plier hands on her breasts.

  They burned like nursing.

  “Give me those,” she heard, and then she heard a key slot in the trunk’s lock and the trunk opened again. Now Luther stood over her, the last light bleeding from the sky above him and a planet over his shoulder.


  mars its mars

  “No, I don’t reckon I’m done with you after all.”

  He pulled her legs out of the trunk, opened them.

  She was shaking too hard to fight.

  Her head hurt so bad it took her a moment to realize exactly what he intended.

  hey no not this anything but this do you hear me

  please god

  The false Indian whooped.

  The very dead one averted his eyes.

  A coldness passed into her, a letting go. Whatever happened next would happen to a doll.

  Luther unbuckled his belt.

  The Camaro driver walked up behind him.

  “Hey,” the smaller one said.

  “What,” Luther said.

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “Not this,” the smaller one drawled calmly, as if reminding Luther of something already agreed between them. “Anything but this.”

  Luther stared at him, still holding Jude’s ankle with one hand. He looked between Jude’s legs again.

  “Do you hear me?” the smaller one said.

  “Yeah,” Luther said, fuming. “I hear you. You know what? You can be real goddamn boring sometimes.”

  Luther pulled one of Jude’s shoes off, threw it at the Beta driver, then slammed the trunk shut. Judith heard a jingle as Luther dropped the Camaro’s keys for the smaller one to pick up.

  “Come on, boys,” Luther said outside. “We’ll drink this bitch in five hunnert miles. We got a nun in the trunk, and we got an old fucker in Florida to kill. Let’s motor.”

  PART FOUR

  The Quick

  32

  DARKNESS. JUDE FELT EVERY BUMP AND SHIFT AS SHE LAY IN THE TRUNK’S CONFINES, unaware that the chlorine she smelled came from pool water shed by the last occupant’s skin and hair, unaware of how and how badly the Bereaved had died; that any of them might have escaped seemed unlikely. She had spotted the van parked just past the car they put her in. Where she should feel grief or rage at their passing she now felt nothing. The only feelings she could detect with any clarity were physical: pain, confinement, and thirst. She hated her headache, she hated the sports car’s tiny trunk and the spare tire, which crammed alternately into her back or shoulder depending how she turned. Worse, she hadn’t had anything to drink since a few mouthfuls of lukewarm water at a truck stop water fountain near St. Louis. Her mouth was so dry she dared not try to swallow. She doubted she could speak, so she tried to pray in her head and found no words that sounded like prayer; only babble and snatches of idiot song. Two verses of a song by a female trio whose name she could never remember kept repeating over and over again. Paisley Bride? Paisley Bird? Some beach-bubble-gum nonsense from the summer of ’66 that Glendon just adored, innocent of its clumsy double entendre. That she could only remember two verses was both blessing and curse.