by Z. Rider
He fucking killed me.
The biker coming after him.
The crew closest to the bunkroom door burst in when he shouted himself awake, the others pushing in behind them. He blinked in the light, someone having yelled for the driver to turn it on. He was still clutching the curtain.
Faces crouched at eye level. Someone put a hand on his shoulder.
“Bad dream,” he whispered, shifting away. “Just a bad fucking dream.”
Shawn and Jessie lingered, watching until Dean dragged the curtain shut, mumbling one more time that it had just been a bad dream.
He buried his head under the pillow.
After the door to the lounge closed, while everyone was gathered up front, talking in hushed tones about him, he dragged himself from the bunk to feel in the darkness for his bag among the others in the junk. Dug through it till he found his knife.
He unfolded it and put it under his pillow, his hand tight around the handle as he stared at the inside of the bus wall.
3.
* * *
The miles spooled out, and Carl had every trick going to keep himself awake, including a stinging palm print on the side of his face from slapping himself. His thoughts bounced from that night in the high school parking lot to the fact that he’d been in Dean Thibodeaux’s house—Dean Thibodeaux, he couldn’t wait to tell Tim that—to the way the biker had looked at him behind the bus, raising a gloved finger to his smirking lips. The two of them sharing a secret.
Whenever he got to that point in his thoughts, they split off in one of two ways: you should have fucking shot him while you had the chance, and Did you see his fucking eyes?
And teeth. The biker’s lips had pulled back in a grin, and his mouth had been like a wolf’s.
I’m losing my mind.
He laughed, sharp and edgy. In a singsongy voice, he said, “I’m losing my mi-ind.” At least that’d help keep him awake, talking to himself. “Did you see that, Soph? He had some fucked up teeth. What do you think, Sophie, am I—” His eyes searched the space under the mirror. Soph was gone.
His heart slammed to a stop for a second.
Right, his back pocket. He’d put her picture in his pocket. He turned his grip on the wheel. This was the first time since the week after she’d died that she wasn’t hanging from the mirror.
It’s pathetic, isn’t it? he’d said to Tim.
Why? How else are you going to remember her if you don’t see her face?
The road funneled under him. His eyes itched. He snapped his attention to the lights ahead of him.
How long had it been since he’d slept? How fucking long?
He checked the gas gauge again, his new nemesis. Fully in the red now. They passed another exit, him and the bus, another chance to stop and refuel. He’d lose them if he slipped off the interstate on his own. The question, though, was whether it was better to lose them for the ten minutes it would take to fill up, or the hour it would take to hike from wherever he ran out of gas back to the nearest station and then back to his car. Then he’d still have to stop and refuel because he could only lug so much gas in a can.
Next chance, he had to stop. Had to. He just hoped he hadn’t held off too long already.
The bus was going fifty-five. If he could get back on the interstate doing eighty, and assuming the bus didn’t pull off in the meantime—how long would it take to catch up?
Jesus, as little sleep as he’d had, he didn’t even know how to start to figure out the answer to that.
Fangs. That was the answer to that. -was half hysterical. He was definitely losing it.
The sun, though. That was welcome. It nudged against the bottom of the sky, lightening the black night to dark purple. That gave him a hope. With daylight coming, he’d get a burst of energy. Maybe manage to get this thing done before he ended himself in a fiery crash against the guardrail, the bus lumbering on down the road without him.
They were nearing a city. He had no idea what city. He’d spaced out on the signs.
Another exit finally, just a road name.
A glance in the rearview gave him a welcome sight: the cars behind him were more than just twin beams of light. They had outlines to their roofs. The night was coming to an end.
When his eyes dropped back to the bus, his heart beat a quick tap dance: a red signal flashed. The bus slowed.
He followed it right off the exit ramp. And right past a gas station. He gripped the wheel and sat forward, staying with the bus, unwilling to lose it now. It made a straight line for a mile or so, stopping for red lights. Finally putting on its signal. The turn took them down a tree-lined residential street for a while. Past a school, its crossing guards not out yet but a scattering of cars already in the parking lot. Eventually the houses moved closer together, and Carl could make out glimpses of downtown buildings up ahead. Then they were there. They waited at a light at the intersection to the main drag, the bus’s left signal blinking. The light turned green and the bus rolled forward.
Carl pressed the gas.
The Cougar died.
Shit.
He turned the key off, back on, giving it gas—what gas was left. It sputtered, coughed, and died. A car swung around him.
Great. Just fucking great. He looked left, right. Leaned forward to check the drag. Fuck. More cars swept around him; he was the rock in the middle of their stream. He turned, squinting against the orange rise of sun.
There. Three blocks back. He turned his hazards on, locked up. Headed for the sidewalk and hiked up the road. He’d made it to the next city at least, wherever the fuck that was. Once he got his car moving again, he could find them. How many buses with Massachusetts plates were sitting around downtown, right?
The only catch was, where would his guy be then?
Worry about it later. He needed to piss now—so urgently he sped up his steps, trying to walk as quickly yet gingerly as possible. As he crossed the street to the gas station, the need got so strong he started to worry it was just going to spill down his leg. Wouldn’t that be just great? Not enough to be unwashed, unshaven, and unkempt, but he could smell like piss too!
At the urinal, he almost didn’t get his dick out in time, but once he had it emptying into the bowl of cool water—pissing had never felt so good in his life.
He left the men’s room with a lighter step and a rumbling stomach.
He tore chunks off a Snickers bar while a gas jockey filled a metal gas can at the pumps for him.
Maybe he’d lost his guy. Maybe the biker had dropped out from under the bus while he was busy leaking his lizard, and he was on his way to take care of whatever he’d ridden a few hundred miles under a bus to take care of. Maybe the biker would be on his way out of town before Carl even got to his car with this can of gas.
Maybe his quest was over. No point in hanging around here, right? Get in the car, circle the block to get it to this gas station, fill the tank to the brim, and head west. West and west and west, all the way home. A load off his shoulders. He’d tried, and he’d lost him—it was time to move on with life. He stuffed the last of the chocolate in his mouth as he fished a dollar bill from his pocket. With the gas can heavy in hand, he headed back to his car, where people kept pulling up, pausing, then going around.
The sun was up. A new day had broken. He’d make a quick check downtown—if he didn’t see the bus, he’d go home. That was the coin he’d flip. He was already rehearsing the phone call to Tim:
Where are you?
Missouri.
What are you doing in Missouri?
It’s kind of hard going from the northeast to the southwest without going through something like Missouri.
Are you coming home?
Yes, and don’t use up the hot water. I’m going to need it when I get there. And pizza. After I catch up on a week’s worth of sleep.
He was smiling a little as he screwed the gas cap back on. Someone honked. He waved a hand—sorry.
After stowing the can in his t
runk, he got in and turned onto the main drag. No bus on that. Fine by him. He peered up side streets—no bus, no bus, no bus.
But he spotted a venue, right up around one corner, facing a one-way street. Man Made Murder on the marquee. Well shit. He eased over and turned onto the narrower road.
The building was concrete blocks painted brick red, three stories high with windows only at the very bottom and very top, the ones at the bottom plastered over with tour posters.
The place looked dead, litter swept against its dark front doors, the ticket booth shuttered. As he passed an alley running along the far side of the venue, he saw the bus, sitting quietly within it. He pulled up along the curb past the alley and shut his engine off.
Here we go again.
He just had to look under the bus. No biker, no job to do, no reason to hang around. The gas station was just a few blocks away—he didn’t even need to go back down to the main drag to get to it. Ten minutes, he’d be out of here.
As he was locking up, a white taxi pulled up to the mouth of the alley, its engine running. Waiting. Carl didn’t know if he was waiting for the space Carl had taken. The driver was sitting not ten feet from him, smoking, tapping his wheel.
He couldn’t very well go peer under a bus with this guy sitting there.
He went around his own car, to the sidewalk, where he shoved his hands in his pockets and looked around. Across the street, a jewelers hadn’t opened yet. Next to that, a pizza place, also not open yet.
Footsteps brought his gaze back. A middle-aged guy in a windbreaker and well-worn tan trousers came out of the alley, opened the back door of the cab, tossed a small bag in ahead of him before dropping into the backseat, pulling the door closed. The driver straightened, hit his meter, and put his signal on. Carl watched the cab drive on past him.
With his hands still pushed in his pockets, he turned on a toe and strode into the alley. It was cooler there—bright from the sun-lightened sky but shadowy near the bottom. He stuck close to a wall, throwing looks over his shoulder.
Either the biker was there or—more likely—he wasn’t.
Christ, he might never have been there at all. He could have hallucinated the whole thing. He wasn’t discounting that possibility, not completely, though as he played it back, it still felt real. Crazy as it was.
His shoulder brushed the wall as he slipped between it and the bus. This side of the venue hadn’t been painted red—like they’d run out of that and had had to settle for grime blue. Graffiti scrawled on the walls said Killroy had been there, and “Peace Nation ’77,” whatever that meant.
One more look toward the street as he hunkered down, duck walking toward the side of the bus—listening for noises, from inside and outside…and noises from beneath. He ducked low. The underside of the bus was pitch-black at first, his eyes accustomed to the sunlight. He closed them, counting silently, then opened and stared, concentrating, looking for the softer bumps he’d seen the night before.
His mouth opened. His breath caught in his throat. He looked up the alley, like he was looking for someone to share this with.
There was a fucking guy clinging to the bus chassis. Still.
Well shit.
Cars passed the alley at a steady rate. People on foot.
The band, for all he knew, was still on the bus.
He probably couldn’t shoot the guy here. Who knew what he’d hit. He didn’t mind blowing himself up, but the band didn’t deserve to go out in a ball of flames.
But if he could lure the guy out…well, different story.
“Psst.”
The black lump didn’t move.
Fuck.
What it must take to cling to brackets and pipes for hours on end.
“Hey,” he whispered. If the band was on the bus, he didn’t need them coming out to see what was going on.
A little louder: “Hey.”
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe this was something else under there—who knew what, but what’d he know about buses anyway?
He glanced up the alley before ducking low enough to stretch an arm into the shadows. The air coming from the ground was cool, but heat radiated from the undercarriage. He shifted his other palm on the asphalt and reached farther in, his fingertips just brushing fabric. His arm and shoulder blocked his view. The side of his thumb brushed something more rigid. Could be the collar of the leather jacket, and his fingers could be touching the ski mask. It wasn’t warm, the way you’d expect a hat someone had been wearing to be warm.
Holy fuck. What if this guy’d crawled under here and died?
That would be kind of cool actually. No less than he deserved.
He turned his toes a little, reaching farther, pebbles grinding under his sneaker.
Hard fingers clamped his wrist.
Air sucked out his lungs like a high-power vacuum had switched on.
He tried to rock back away from the bus.
The hand gripping him yanked him farther in.
His knee hit the pavement. The back of his head slammed the undercarriage.
The hand gripping him twisted, dragging him another few inches closer.
Carl dug his knees against the pavement. His other hand scrabbled forward.
Another yank on his arm from the black, faceless thing clinging to the bus.
In the dim undercarriage, without the sun to interfere, Carl’s vision was adjusting quickly. Even as he bent his elbow to try to gain some leverage, his eyes were on the outline of the knife jutting from the sheath on the biker’s thigh. He pushed forward with his toes, lunging for it.
The snap holding it popped as he jerked its handle.
The blade sssed softly as it slid free from the leather.
The biker released his wrist to reach for the knife.
Carl clenched its hilt in his fist and plunged it into the biker’s leg.
A hiss of pain came from the mask.
The biker grabbed hold of Carl’s hair.
Carl rocked the knife out and pushed it through leather, into the biker’s side. The biker oofed, then slammed Carl’s head against the underside of the bus, but the angle was awkward, and though it made his ear bleat, it also made it possible for Carl to wrench his head free. The hand came at him again. He banged his head on the pipes as he lunged to meet it with the bloody blade.
The biker’s hand didn’t have enough weight behind it. The knife pierced the leather but didn’t sink far into flesh.
He pulled it back and plunged it into the biker’s side again.
As the biker reached for him again, he caught his arm and shoved it downward. And buried the knife up to its hilt in the biker’s neck.
“Fuck you,” Carl whispered hard, spittle wetting his lips. “Fuck you.” As he pulled back, dragging himself backward toward the light, the knife still stuck in the biker’s throat, he heard a gurgle of a laugh.
The words that crawled out from under the bus were wet and burbly, but there was a smirk in them. “I smell you, asshole. After this, I’m coming after you, you little shit.”
Carl’s sneakers scuffed over pavement as he hauled himself into the sunshine.
“I’m coming after you. And I ain’t gonna leave nothin’ but bones.”
He slammed his back into the alley wall. Above, the blinds were drawn on the bus’s windows—no one peeking out as far as he could tell.
His heart pounded, big booms in his chest. His nerves jittered. He felt high—like crazy high. Like nearly-fucking-got-killed high. It thrummed through him.
The biker chuckled, a gurgling, sucking sound. It stopped, and in its place Carl heard the sick, wet sound of the knife being drawn slowly out.
“Asshole,” the biker muttered.
Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking holy fucking Christ.
Carl pushed to his feet, the wall against his back, his palms flat on the bricks. He looked down at one of his hands, blood smeared in the crook of his thumb, wet and glistening along a finger. Seeping into the crevice of a fingernail. A streak
of the stuff had followed his palm up the wall.
His cheeks were cold. Numb. Tingling a little. His mouth was dry—he was gasping in gulps of air.
Holy fucking shit.
He pushed off the wall and walked away, trembling.
He just fucking—he just walked away. No idea where he was going, he just needed to move. His feet needed to move so he could think, so he could process this shit.
Once his hand was clean—wiped on a shirt he pulled out of the duffle bag on the back seat—and he had two cigarettes smoked down to the filter, he headed toward the main drag, looking for a pay phone.
It took forever for Tim to answer, and when his groggy voice—it was probably six in the morning there—said, “’Lo?” Carl ran right over it: “I’m losing my fucking mind.”
“Wha? Where are you?” No snappy comeback on the mind losing—no, Hey, admitting you have a problem is the first step, or Tell me something I didn’t know. Tim must have been dead to the world when the phone rang.
“I have no fucking idea,” Carl said. “You’re gonna love this, though, as much you love horror movies. Wait’ll you hear this. Holy fucking—I’m losing my mind. Are you ready for this?”
“Can you just—”
“I’ve been tracking a fucking vampire.”
Silence. Then: “Are you out of your mind?”
“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Only he wasn’t out of his mind. He’d just stabbed a guy in the neck, and the guy was still alive back there—not just still alive, but threatening to leave him nothing but bones when he got a hold of him. And why hadn’t he gotten a hold of Carl yet? Because he couldn’t come out in the sun! “He can’t come out in the sun!” he said into the phone.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“He can’t come out in the sun. He’s hanging onto the underside of a bus. That’s why he couldn’t just take his bike.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
He couldn’t even try to make sense. Thoughts collided, smashing into each other. Banging against his skull. “I need to find a stake.”
“What? Hold on. Hold up. Now you are talking crazy. What the fuck?”