The Suicide Motor Club

by Christopher Buehlman

  Luther’s Favorite!

  Stickers representing pigs and cows and other barnyard animals had been peeled out of a sheet of stickers in the back and affixed to a barnyard scene, and on another page the names of about half of the state capitals had been crookedly pasted next to their states. Whether this had been done by bored vampires or the children of some unfortunate family was anyone’s guess. Clayton resolved not to show Judith any of this, nor the pictures of happy wheat-blond children smiling safely in their backseats. He turned instead to page sixty, where a dark green line representing I-40 and Route 66 crossed nearly straight through New Mexico, curving up left of Albuquerque like a snake waking up to strike at Gallup. All along this line were dots and stars in different colors of ink. Some penman with less-legible script had scratched Moriarty just right of Clines Corners. At the top margin of the page, x—good mine had been written, with corresponding x’s clustered southeast of Albuquerque, but especially near Thoreau and Bluewater. The word uranium had been scrawled near one such x so small as to be barely legible. Clayton knew how valuable abandoned mines were—his own fold-out map had not a few marked on it—though he favored pinholes that would show up when the map was pressed to a backlit window or laid over a bright color.

  Judith came over now, her hair dripping down to wet the collar of her shirt, and peered over his shoulder, touching her fingers to her mouth at the sight of several dots near Clines Corners.

  “That’s where it happened,” she said, pointing. “Do you think . . . ?”

  “Those dots could mean anything,” he said. “But one thing they certainly mean.”

  “This is the road they use to cross west.”

  “My thought exactly.”

  “We’re ahead of them,” she said. “I know it. But we need to stay that way.”

  “That’ll be easy,” he said. “We can dump the van and put me in the trunk for the daylight stretch.”

  “We’ll need a van. Or a truck. But not necessarily that one.”

  “You have an idea,” he said.

  “You won’t like it.”

  “The only idea I would like would be for us to leave the vengeance part to the Lord, as I believe it says in one of your texts, and go spend the rest of the summer in Patagonia, where the days are nice and short. Any chance of that?”

  She gave him a look.

  “Yes, that was a proper nun’s look. Well done. I stand rebuked. What horrible thing am I doing?”

  “You’re joining the Suicide Motor Club. And so am I.”

  —

  THEY ABANDONED THE VAN NEAR THE SUNFLOWERS.

  Clayton drove for most of the night while she drifted in and out of consciousness in the backseat. The highway’s white lines ran at him and ran at him and never exhausted themselves.

  Their conversation echoed in his mind through most of Oklahoma. He would always remember her with her damp hair, leaning conspiratorially close while she told him what she intended to do. There was no question of him talking her out of it. Neither was there any question of his failure to do what she asked.

  I would prefer not to kill any of them myself.

  Will you if it comes down to it?

  If it’s that or watch one of them harm you, then yes.

  I want you to destroy them even if I die, Clayton.

  I won’t promise that. So you’d better not die.

  I think I will, though.

  It sounds like you will.

  Destroy them, Clayton.

  And then myself?

  Yes.

  Isn’t that a mortal sin?

  For me, yes. Not for you, I think.

  But isn’t that what what you’re doing to yourself amounts to?

  No. It’s up to them.

  I still don’t see what’s in it for me.

  Something must be or we wouldn’t still be talking about it.

  Perhaps.

  Maybe you’ve caught the scent of your own redemption.

  No.

  You say no, but you’re not sure. You’re on new ground.

  Stop it, please.

  All right. But I can trust you? To do what I ask?

  I don’t know.

  I do. I know.

  Then why ask?

  You’re right. I take it back. I know I can trust you.

  But if you die, all bets are off.

  I understand.

  I reserve the right to flee like a coward.

  If you say so.

  And then they stood with the night wind in the sunflowers and he touched her damp hair and she permitted this.

  The lie you tell my eyes is a pretty one, she said.

  As is the lie your eyes tell my heart.

  They shared a gaze two seconds too long.

  Jude looked away.

  We can’t be lovers.

  Who wants you anyway?

  She smiled.

  He tangled her hair into his fingers and pulled a little hard. She did not wince. Rather she put her fingers in his hair and pulled it the same way he had pulled hers.

  Maybe I’ll kill you after all, he said.

  Then maybe I’ll die, she had said, offering a smile he did not return. A shadow passed over his face.

  I could, you know. If I had any sense. Drain you and leave you in the sunflowers.

  I love sunflowers.

  Do you?

  They’re my favorite.

  Why so?

  There was a Greek myth. About a girl who loved the sun god so much she turned into a sunflower to watch him all day. I can’t remember the names.

  She was Klytia. He was Helios.

  But the idea stayed with me. It’s a beautiful image. I think about God like that.

  I do, too.

  Really?

  Yes. Because Klytia loved a god that could not or would not love her back. She sat herself upon a hill and wasted away for eight days. No food. No drink. And all because Helios had abandoned her for another nymph. But I believe she died awfully. And the other gods so pitied Klytia, watching her brilliant lothario ride his chariot brilliantly across his brilliant sky, that they turned her into a turnsole. Not a sunflower, by the way. Sunflowers are native to North America. Ovid never met a sunflower. Anyway, there’s the god you’ve stayed chaste for. Ever noticed how closely chaste rhymes with waste? Will we really not be lovers?

  We will really not be lovers.

  And yet you let me touch your hair.

  Yes.

  What else will you permit?

  Nothing.

  She drew back then.

  You’re using me, he said.

  Yes.

  He had considered this, looking at the pale, warm face of the woman whose fate suddenly mattered to him. When had that begun? The moment he saw her cross the road? When she defied Luther Nixon despite her helplessness and the murder in his heart? She had an idea about how to confront her much more powerful foes. She didn’t know what would happen after the opening gambit, but she trusted that it would be pleasing to her God.

  All right, Clayton had said. Use me.

  46

  JUDITH WOKE AN HOUR BEFORE DAWN, SWITCHED TO THE FRONT PASSENGER SEAT while he gassed them up.

  On they rode. At first light, she would load him into that purgatorial trunk and wrap him in blankets next to the bag containing her cross and holy water, the bag they had taken from the impound lot in Joplin. Watching the ease with which Clayton charmed the night watchman out of the keys to the van and the bag, which normally would have cost them ten dollars to liberate, had been instructive—this was how they lived among us so long without discovery, this ability to wipe or alter memory. Was it possible that he was doing it to her? Did she now hold false memories that masked things he wished to hide from her? Had he fed?


  No.

  He fed on the night watchman, though.

  He had asked her to go to the car while he did, but she had insisted on watching.

  Why?

  So I never forget what you are.

  Despite the need for blood he shared with the killers, she believed Clayton would stand with her against them. But what did that make him? On one hand, she was grateful not to see him as a monster anymore. On the other hand, the image he projected was so handsome, so engaging, that she found herself craving his company. His touch, though she perceived it as cool, made her skin react as though he were warm. Though she knew it could in no way be organic, she wanted him sexually in a way that she had not wanted even her husband since the first year of their marriage. The realization shamed her at first, until she reasoned out that it must be part of the same illusion that made her see him as a living man of thirty rather than a century-old cadaver. It was not her fault that she felt these things—she had no more choice in the matter than a fever victim had in hallucinating. If she found him attractive, it was just a by-product of the grace that allowed her to see him without feeling a distracting repulsion. At least the good Lord had shown him to her as he truly was before setting this pleasant mask on him. And yet there was something to the way he spoke, something in his voice not unlike a purr. His intelligence was even more appealing than his wide-set, gentle eyes and thick hair. The things he said, even when she knew he was tempting her, tempted her.

  When this is all over, he had said, if we both survive, I invite you to come visit me. I have a home in New England, a place I own and pay taxes on in my own name—a place I pay a gardener to tend and a handyman to repair.

  Why don’t you stay there?

  It would kill me to stay still.

  Literally?

  I think so, yes. New experiences refresh what’s left of my soul. I go home once a year or so for short visits, usually at All Souls Day.

  Do you have a proper coffin?

  Actually, yes.

  Do you have a spare coffin for guests?

  Actually, yes. Which brings me to another point.

  Don’t even say it.

  I can make you what I am.

  I asked you not to say it.

  I don’t want you to answer me now.

  I just did.

  I only propose that we consider one another’s offers. You offer me eternal life, in the form of redemption and final death? Then I have every right to offer you the closest thing to eternal life I can fully believe in. If salvation is possible for me . . .

  I don’t know that it is.

  But if it is, it might be possible for you as well, even if you join me in my night of lovely colors.

  Is it lovely?

  It’s indescribable. But unlike your pearly gates, I can swear to the existence of the afterlife I propose.

  Heaven isn’t pearly gates.

  What then?

  Union with the divine.

  We are already divine, if there is divinity.

  No, Clayton. We’re not. Maybe a small part of us is, but that’s the part we sell when we try to make this short life better.

  Theories.

  Not theories. I know.

  You say you know, I say you don’t, and here we have the classic impasse. Faith versus reason. May I kiss you?

  No.

  Very well. But when this is over, should we get separated, come to me on All Hallows’ Eve. If you come by night, I’ll know you wish to be my lover.

  How her body had betrayed her when he said that. Like a small, warm well opening in dry ground.

  I won’t.

  Maybe. But you’ll think about it.

  If I come, it will be by day. To release you from this.

  Very well. If I’m in my coffin at sunrise, drag it to the rear garden. Most of the grounds are well shaded, but there’s a place near a statue of an angel where the sun hits red maple trees. Face me to the sun and open the lid.

  Where’s the coffin?

  The basement.

  Don’t you lock yourself in?

  I won’t that night, or that day.

  How will I know you’re in there?

  By the weight.

  You mean this?

  Yes. If I remain in my home, in my coffin at daybreak, November first, the year of our lord one thousand, nine hundred and sixty-nine, it means I’ve accepted your offer.

  I’ll pray for you to be there.

  As I’ll pray for you to come at dusk the night before. I’ve got a bed with soft sheets and goose feather pillows.

  So where exactly is this home?

  I’ll tell you if we live.

  She murmured her half of the conversation to herself as she drove.

  A stranger would have thought she was praying.

  —

  HALF AN HOUR BEFORE I-40 CROSSED INTO AMARILLO, SHE GOT TIRED. SHE started scanning the road for motels but broke out in a cold sweat.

  Her field of vision doubled for a moment and she saw herself seized and held by the monsters, all five of them. One had each limb. Luther had her head. They pulled her apart.

  Clayton pulled over in a cloud of dust, putting his hazard lights on.

  “Are you well?”

  “I will be. Give me a minute,” she said, her voice shaking.

  “Do we need to stop? We could wait for them here.”

  “Not here. We need to get them near morning. They’ll cross here in the thick of the night. We won’t fight them here.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’ll lose.”

  —

  SHE CHECKED INTO THE CACTUS FLOWER MOTEL IN THE VILLAGE OF SANTA Estrella, New Mexico, under the name Mary English. The day was bright, the temperature well over ninety degrees. She moved Clayton out of the broiling trunk by helping cover him with the tarp therein; he staggered through the burning light huddled in his rectangular oasis of shade and collapsed in the room, which she had already screened off with blinds and towels. He retched for a solid minute before he could stand again, though he stood only long enough to kiss her hand in thanks and then to blockade himself under the bed closest to the wall. The window air conditioner hummed and rattled to protest its herculean job staving off the July New Mexico sun. She put the Do Not Disturb sign on the doorknob, ate the rest of the hamburger she had picked up in Tucumcari, and drank from the spigot of the bathroom sink. She showered in cool water and stood naked before the mirror for a very long time, tracing the scars on her face, the slightly deflated breasts and belly she’d had since Glendon came, the hard shelves of her collarbones. She did not do this for vanity’s sake. She did not know why she did it at first, but then it occurred to her that she was saying good-bye to her body.

  “Thy will be done,” she said, and dressed once again in the habit of her order.

  Am I still a member of that order? Have they filed the paperwork with the Vatican to have me expelled for abandoning my abbey? Does it matter, so long as I have faith? I’m so very scared.

  She sat on the nearer bed and opened the nightstand drawer, pulling out the brown Gideon Bible. Underneath it she found a tiny diamond earring with no back, which she did not pick up.

  Do not be distracted

  As much to keep her mind from fear as to arm herself spiritually, she spent most of the afternoon in prayer. At three o’clock, she fulfilled the divine office for the hour of Nones, reading the story of Samson from the book of Judges. She spoke in whispers, and when she sang, she sang her Te Deum and other hymns in a small voice. If any of this bothered Clayton in his blanket bunker under the bed, he had the good taste to keep it to himself.

  At four o’clock, she went shopping for cans and jars.

  At six o’clock, she went to the gas station and started filling them. She also bought a foldable map of
the state and a couple of hard caramels.

  The sun went down just before eight thirty and Clayton drove back east to Santa Rosa to charm someone out of a van.

  —

  THE KILLERS LEFT THE CRACKED, OVERGROWN TIRE SHOP AND AUTO GARAGE IN the mostly abandoned town of McLean, Texas, at eight thirty. Luther drove his new Mustang, and Neck Brace rode with him. Cole drove the COPO with Calcutta riding shotgun. Rob climbed wearily into the cab of the truck, though only after remarking that he “wouldn’t drive this piece of shit forever.”

  He was right.

  PART FIVE

  The Dead

  47

  CLAYTON WAITED IN THE VAN, A 1960 CHEVY STEP VAN. ITS OWNER, CHUY, A MEXICAN American house painter, would not remember the nocturnal rapping at the trailer door that he answered with his double-barreled shotgun in hand, nor handing over this gun and car keys, nor going to the bedroom to fetch his visitor the half-full box of shells. He would not remember sitting obediently on the rickety kitchen chair with his chin up, like a man waiting for the barber to start his shave, nor would he understand why he woke up the next morning woozy and headachy, with an oil slick on the gravel drive where his van should have been. His wife, Consuelo, would not remember being ordered back to bed, nor understand why her pillowcase was soaked with spit. Only after they called the police to report the theft of the vehicle would Chuy notice the ten gold double eagle coins stacked neatly near his telephone. Judith had asked Clayton not to ruin anybody with his theft and had offered to pay him back for whatever he spent, should she survive. Clayton had agreed to this arrangement, but only because he wanted her tethered to the future by as many lines as possible. Her plan to deal with the monsters was as close to suicide as one could get without tying a noose around one’s neck and stepping off a stool.

  Clayton’s role in the operation wasn’t much less foolhardy, even with his ability to survive catastrophic injury and heal rapidly. He would almost certainly suffer catastrophic injury.