by Jason Offutt
“You sure you’re going to be okay?”
Jenna nodded at Doug. He grabbed her and pressed her closely to him. “I love you, you know?”
A tear dropped down her cheek. “I know.”
He kissed her deeply, then let her go. “I taste like vomit,” she said.
He grinned. “I don’t care. I will be back for you.”
She grabbed his hand and squeezed tightly. “You bet your ass.”
Doug turned and put an arm around Nikki. “Let’s get this done before it gets dark.”
They walked to the jagged hole in the doors, Doug hobbling on his one good leg. He paused at the door and glanced up at the birds that lined the roof of the parking garage and hospital. “They’re still in there.”
Terry stole a glance at him. “You scared?”
Doug nodded. “I’d be an idiot not to be. Let’s go.”
Terry stepped in first, the M27 pressed into his shoulder. He flipped on his flashlight and disappeared. Nikki put an arm around Doug’s waist and they too stepped into the darkness.
Jenna picked up the rifle and gripped it tight. She was alone.
July 29: Julesburg, Colorado
Chapter 8
Donnie woke slowly, sucking in a line of drool that stretched to his shoulder. “Wake up, sleepyhead.” Mother’s voice seemed so far away. But she wasn’t far away. She was close, just in the next room. “Come on, Donnie honey. You don’t want to be late. Mommy’s hungry. Mommy needs her breakfast.”
“Yes, Mother,” he whispered. “I’m coming.” Donnie shook his head, trying to work out the cobwebs. Mother? It couldn’t be; Mother didn’t talk anymore. But she did get hungry. Insatiable, that woman. He forced his eyes open, the morning sun harsh. He sat in Mother’s comfy flower print chair in front of the big living room window, where he’d watched the bad people and their silver car all night through Daddy’s binoculars. My binoculars, darn it. My binoculars. Daddy’s gone. The light in the window had long gone dead. Must have run out of fuel. Those bad people must not have seen it or they would have been here, Donnie just knew it.
The living room wall thumped. “Mother?” Yes, she was close by, but she hadn’t talked to him; it was just a dream. A dream where Mother still talked and Donnie didn’t keep her locked in her bedroom. The wall thumped again, a growl Donnie couldn’t understand coming from a human throat, was muffled through the drywall. “I’ll go get breakfast.”
He lifted the heavy Jason binoculars to his eyes and looked across I-80 toward the quiet country road where the bad people had slept last night, riding in before a wave of black birds and good people. Holy people. This morning something was wrong. The tent the man with both feet put up just last night at dusk was down, the canvas chairs were gone, too, folded and slid into the trunk the man with two feet shut just now. Just right now. Donnie’s knuckles grew white as his fingers tried to dig into the unyielding plastic of the binocular barrels. They’re teasing me. They saw the light. They know I’m here and they didn’t come down to say ‘hi.’ The ginger woman who looked like Vanessa Hagen helped the limping man into the car, but before he sat down, she wrapped her arms around his neck (and choked the doody out of him) kissed him. She kissed him right in front of Donnie. YOU GUNKY. YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE FOR ME. The limping man sat in the car and ginger-haired Vanessa Hagen closed the door behind him. She disappeared into the back seat, her long legs the last things Donnie saw before the back door slammed shut.
He shot up from Mother’s flower print chair, Daddy’s rifle clattering to the floor, forgotten. Oh, my God. What’s happening? What’s happening here? He dropped the binoculars; the dead weight jerked on the strap he’d looped over his neck. The light was an invitation. They were supposed to come down to the house and be friends with Mother. A smile crossed Donnie’s sweaty face. They’re packing because they’re coming for a visit. I need to make some tea and set out cookies. He shook his head. He’d eaten all the Chips Ahoy! in the cabinets. All he had left were those nasty Voortman Chocolate Wafer Cookies Mom liked. He didn’t have time to run down to the Family Market. A giggle popped from his mouth; he cupped a hand over his lips to keep Mother from hearing it. She got upset so easily. Donnie couldn’t go the Family Market because the checker Connie Benjamin was all chewed up in the back yard. The wafer cookies would have to do.
A reflection of morning sunlight flashed off the window of the sliver car. Donnie looked through the Jason’s one more time before he went to fix the tea. Well, he had to do Number 1 out the kitchen door first, but then he’d fix tea and get out the cookies. He just wanted one more look at company coming to pay a visit. The silver car turned onto a side road that went parallel with the highway, then went south on Route 27 toward Julesburg. It was, it was, it was— “NOOO,” Donnie screamed. Mother pounded the walls harder. The people in that car were bad. Bad, bad, BAD. The silver car turned from Route 27 and onto I-80, taking all of Mother’s new friends east, away from town.
The binoculars dropped to his chest again as he brought his right hand to his mouth, his index finger finding its way in like it had ever since he was a little boy. Think, Donnie. Think, think, think. Fix this. You have to fix this. Daddy’s truck, a 2011 red Chevy Silverado was still in the garage. It hadn’t been started since Daddy ran away, but Donnie knew where Daddy kept his keys, on a peg by the door that led from the garage to the kitchen and Daddy showed Donnie how to drive it. He said Donnie was a good driver.
The blows to the wall came harder. A picture of Donnie and his parents at the Garden of the Gods fell and hit an end table, the glass shattered and danced across the short, tight carpet. That was the last trip they had taken as a family, after Donnie had gotten out of the hospital. That would have been his senior year in high school, but he’d missed so much school, too much. People started to change less than a month later. The wall shook. “Shut up Mother,” Donnie screamed, then winced. He’d never spoken to Mother like that before. She’s going to be angry. Food. Food would make her happy. He had to get food.
Donnie grabbed Daddy’s keys off the peg and pulled open the door to the garage, the window he’d used to watch Vanessa Hagen peel down to her panties bathed the Silverado in light. He stopped. The bad people had to come home with him; they had to. How am I going to make them do that? The smile returned to his face. He pulled a wooden-handled knife from the cutlery set on the counter that ran from the garage door to the back door, its clean, sharp blade bright and silver in the morning light. He might have to get naughty.
The door slammed behind Donnie as he stepped into the garage, holding the knife in his sweaty hand.
***
The red Silverado stood in the garage like Marty McFly’s 1985 Toyota Hilux at the end of “Back to the Future.” Not sideways in the garage; that was just stupid, but its presence commanded all the space in the garage like the Hilux, although the garage was made for two vehicles. Mother’s Camry was down at Stone Motors because of the stupid Check Engine light. It had been there for two months. Donnie wondered when they’d get finished with it.
He walked to the big rolling door and grabbed the handle. It slid up with a squeal, dust danced in the sunlight. Need to get some WD-40 on that before Daddy comes home. The smell of flowers drifted on the breeze and Donnie breathed in deeply. He hadn’t been outside the house much lately; well, except for the back yard. But the back yard didn’t smell like fresh air and flowers. For some reason, it smelled like blood. Donnie gripped Daddy’s keys tightly enough to hurt the palm of his right hand and slowly approached the truck. “Sorry, Daddy,” he whispered as he walked up to his father’s truck, the one Daddy used to haul him and Mother and all the camping equipment over to McConaughy Lake to fish in the summer. Donnie loved the family fishing trip to McConaughy Lake, but after the year Donnie met that Taylor boy, the trips just stopped.
The driver’s door looked as big and heavy as the gateway to Mordor. Donnie reached toward the handle and flinched. “Don’t touch my fucking truck.” The bas
eball only bounced off the sidewall, just that one time, but oh, how Daddy had beaten him. Daddy’s not here. Donnie looked around; he was alone in the garage. He thought he might be alone in the town (except for drunk old Mr. Miller) and Mother. Donnie smiled as another picture fell in the living room. She misses me.
“I’ll be right home, Mother,” he said softly. “With a present for you.”
Donnie slipped inside the Chevrolet; the engine came to life on the first turn of the key. Daddy always kept such good care of his truck. Donnie sat the knife on the passenger seat, pulled Daddy’s binoculars Mine, darn it, mine, over his head and sat them beside the knife, then backed the Silverado into the street. He drove through his neighborhood with the shamefully unkempt yards toward Interstate 80.
***
Donnie was mad at Daddy’s truck. It made him think of the Taylor boy at McConaughy Lake and that was bad. The Taylor boy was wicked. Donnie was 14 when Daddy and Mother took him to the lake for the last time. “Let’s go into town for pizza,” Daddy had said on their third night camping and they set off in the red truck under the wide, blue July sky that was just starting to hint at darkness. Going out for pizza on The Annual Barnett Family Camping Extravaganza was fine with Donnie; Daddy’s campfire hamburgers were always black and crunchy.
The upright Ms. Pac-Man video game in the back room of Jimmy’s Old Country Pizzeria wasn’t retro, it wasn’t a reproduction, it was just old, like the rest of the pizza place. Donnie stood in front of the box, two quarters in his pocket, looking at Ms. Pac-Man chase ghosts across the dingy screen. Drink stains and cigarette burns decorated the console. Mother and Daddy sat inside at one of the dozen red-and-white checkerboard tables waiting for their Big Jimmy, a 16-inch deep-dish pie topped with pepperoni, knackwurst, Italian sausage, pork sausage, bratwurst and three other sausages Donnie hadn’t heard of. He got tired of waiting and wandered toward the back of the restaurant where he found the arcade; Jimmy was taking too long.
Ancient Galaga, Asteroids and Defender games lined a wall, but it was Ms. Pac-Man that drew him in. It was colorful with happy music. Donnie moved the joystick for a few minutes, pretending he was playing the game before he realized he wasn’t alone.
A kid stood by the door that read “Exit.” Donnie was sure he hadn’t been there when he’d walked in, but sometimes things happened Donnie didn’t remember. Kid. The boy wasn’t really a kid. Donnie was fingering the quarters in his pocket when he noticed the boy, maybe sixteen, leaning against a Galaga machine, the Plexiglas screen over the game monitor spray-painted with a peace sign. He was tall with a faded Pearl Jam T-shirt hanging loosely off his lanky frame. The kid nodded at Donnie, the smile beneath his wisp of a mustache bent.
“Hey,” the boy said.
Donnie just looked at him. He didn’t like strangers. Oh, no. Especially not strangers alone. Mother said strangers shouldn’t talk to a boy his age, especially when they were alone. Those strangers were wicked.
“What’s your name?” the skinny boy asked, his voice smooth and low.
Donnie didn’t answer. He didn’t move. Ms. Pac-Man’s “wagga-wagga” seemed forever away, his parents in the dining area forgotten.
“I’m Kurt,” the boy said, then his eyes sprang wide. “You’re not from here, are ya?”
Donnie pinched the quarters between his fingers, the metal dug into his skin. Stranger Danger. Stranger Danger. He started to turn away from this wicked Strangerboy, back toward the restaurant to wait for the slow, slow, slow Big Jimmy, but the Strangerboy’s grin grew wider.
“Wanna see a dead rat?”
Dead? Rat? Donnie had seen dead things. Mice in Daddy’s snappy-snap traps, a cat he found behind a bush in the back yard, Aunt Denise in the box at the place where everybody cried. Donnie always expected these dead things to get up and move, but they never did. All except the cat that’s belly squirmed when Donnie poked it with a stick. That’s where the rat that had been hiding, eating it from the inside. It squirmed out the hole it had made in the cat and disappeared into the bushes. Donnie always wondered what that rat would look like dead.
Donnie nodded. “Yeah.”
The boy winked at him and pushed open the door under the Exit sign. “Cool,” he said. “Let’s go.”
The old wooden door moved silently on its hinges revealing the exit, a dented metal slab with a thin vertical glass crisscrossed with wires and darkened by night. A dim wooden stairwell, its steps worn, led upward. The Strangerboy went up two steps and turned. Donnie stood, staring at him.
“You comin’?” Strangerboy asked.
Why’s there a rat upstairs? Every movie he’d ever seen with rats, the sneaky, gnawing vermin had always been in the basement, the drippy, moldy basement. “Are you sure there’s a dead rat up there?” Donnie asked, his voice high, wavering.
The Strangerboy winked again. Donnie didn’t think he liked that wink. “You bet. It’s swollen and everything.”
Swollen? Like the cat? The Strangerboy went up the steps slowly; Donnie knew Mother would be mad at him, would scold him for being a silly boy, but he followed anyway.
The fluorescent light at the top of the stairs flickered slightly as the Strangerboy topped the stairs and stood on the landing in front of a door to somewhere. He stopped and looked back at Donnie, his smile now almost painful. There was something silly about the way the boy smiled. Donnie took the last few steps slowly, watching the older boy like he might change into some kind of monster.
The Strangerboy seemed tense, nervous. The landing was empty. No people, no pizza, no dead rat. Donnie stepped toward the door.
“Where is it?” Donnie said, pulling his hands from his pockets and reaching toward the knob. “Is it in here?”
The Strangerboy stepped closer. Too close. Too close.
He slapped a rough hand on Donnie’s shoulder and shoved down, his tall frame stronger than it looked. Donnie collapsed to his knees. He tried to stand, but the Strangerboy loomed over him, casting a menacing shadow in the fluttering glow.
“It’s right here, kid,” the older teen said, unzipping his pants with his other hand.
What? Donnie stopped struggling, his mind unsure what to do. Strangerboy fumbled inside his pants and slowly pulled out his stiff circumcised penis, bigger than Donnie’s and bigger than Daddy’s, the only two he’d ever seen. A sudden revulsion rushed through him, but it disappeared quickly, replaced by something. What? Curiosity? Anger? Yes, anger. He lied to me. And Mother always told Donnie lying was wrong.
“You’re bad,” Donnie said, his voice soft. “You don’t have a dead rat. You’re a liar.”
This made the Strangerboy’s wicked smile fade. “Don’t call me that,” he said, his voice no longer smooth, no longer friendly. It was hard. He moved his erect penis inches from Donnie’s face. “You knew there wasn’t a rat. You knew what I wanted you to do, didn’t you? So, go ahead. Put it in your mouth.” The Strangerboy’s grin returned. “You know you wanna.”
Wanna? Thoughts of Mother popped into his head. Mother who sat at the table in the restaurant below and waited with Daddy for the Big Jimmy to finally reach the table. Mother who didn’t like Donnie to walk around the house naked. Mother who hated words like “wanna.” Donnie suddenly felt sick, like he didn’t want the pizza with all that sausage. Wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong. He looked up at Strangerboy, past the thing the boy was now pressing toward his lips and saw the smile. The bent smile.
You’re wicked.
“Open up. I know you wanna.”
Donnie threw his hands out and struck the skinny teen’s hips with the heel of his palms. The Strangerboy bent at the impact, a whoosh pushed past his lips. Doodyhead. Donnie reached out again, this time grabbing the teen’s ankles and pulling the tall boy’s weight out from under him. The Strangerboy flew backward. His head hit the steps first, the thunk loud in the stairwell. The rest of his body followed like a big, meaty Slinky. Oh, what a wonderful toy.
Donnie knelt at
the top of the steps, his breath coming in shallow draws. The Strangerboy was bad, he was wicked, he would burn in hell, Mother would say if Mother knew. But Mother could never know of this. Oh, no. He stood and started down the stairs, a hand on the metal railing, the paint flaked with age. The boy lay in a lump at the bottom. He didn’t move; his head tilted at an angle that didn’t seem right. He’s going to hurt in the morning, Donnie thought as he stepped over the boy and opened the door to the back room. A kid of about six was playing Ms. Pac-Man.
Donnie stuck his hand in his pocket, pulled out the two quarters, sat them on the console and walked into the restaurant.
“Where have you been?” Mother asked as Donnie approached the table and pulled out his seat. The Big Jimmy sat on the table with one slice out.
Daddy shrugged. “I was hungry, kiddo,” he said. “I couldn’t wait forever.”
The chair squealed against the concrete floor when Donnie scooted it under the table. Daddy had already grabbed another slice, but Mother’s plate was still empty, her eyes on him.
“Are you all right, son?” she asked, her elbows on the table, fingers laced before her in a fist.
Donnie didn’t look up. Mother’s eyes were magic, he knew. They made him tell her things, things Donnie never wanted to tell her. “Yes, Mother. I just lost at Pac-Man and I’m hungry.”
“Are you sure that’s all, honey?”
But he wasn’t going to answer Mother. He slid a piece of Big Jimmy onto his plate and picked it up. Put it in your mouth, the Strangerboy’s voice echoed in his head. You know you wanna. Donnie smiled and took a bite as the little boy at the Ms. Pac-Man machine began to scream.
***
Donnie had never driven on the highway. Daddy taught him to drive on country roads and had once even let him drive on C-138 to Ovid to buy beef at D & L Meat Co. “Best cuts of steak this side of Denver,” Daddy told him, as Donnie got the Silverado up to 55 mph. “Yessiree. Don’t go anywhere else.” He looked at Donnie and mussed his brown hair. “Then we’ll stop off at the Gridiron for a quick beer. If you promise not to tell Mom, I’ll buy you a Pepsi.” Donnie had promised. He hated keeping secrets from Mother, but a Pepsi’s a Pepsi and Mom didn’t allow that awful sugary syrup into their house. Driving to Ovid and back to Julesburg meant Daddy thought Donnie was grown up, but not just grown up. After he’d spent two years locked inside Sisters of St. Francis Hospital learning why it was wrong to push that bad Taylor boy down the stairwell, Donnie was grown up and safe. Donnie couldn’t remember the time he’d been so happy, until the day Daddy got hungry and went away forever.