Three Miles Past

by Stephen Graham Jones

  “Sweet,” he said. “Weaning?”

  William forgot to blink for too long, made himself, then suddenly couldn’t stop, just shook his head no. “She doesn’t have any—she’s dry, I mean,” he said.

  The clerk shrugged.

  “Milk, then,” he said, handing the puppy back. “Who knows, right?”

  William paid for two gallons, left, but the puppy wouldn’t drink any of it, even when he pulled over, leaked it into the cup of flesh that had been Julia’s nipple. Even when he leaked it onto his own.

  He shook his head no, no, then just drove faster than he knew he should have, fast enough to get caught and deserve to get caught, but no blue lights flashed, everyone knew he was charmed, probably even wanted him doing what he did.

  But the puppies.

  He smiled, told them it was going to be all right, then, taking a road around some nothing-town, found himself easing through a ditch where a livestock trailer had overturned days ago. The cows were still there. William nodded, didn’t have to look to either side to see his father, moving among them right after the wreck, his sickle glinting moonlight.

  Just past the cows were the dogs that had come to the smell. Green eyes in the tall grass, one of them moving to chase the truck, then all of them moving.

  William nodded like this was the way it was supposed to be.

  A quarter mile down, after the most long-winded of the dogs had fallen away, William saw what had to be there: one of the dogs, already run over.

  He watched it in his headlights until he was sure it wasn’t going to rise, then stepped down, inspected. It was huge, a Rott like Lobo maybe, but bigger, with some Shepherd or something in it. Big like the bear cub.

  William cradled its stiff body to his chest, peeled it from the asphalt, and put it on Julia’s feet, to keep her warm.

  It was tonight. The dog had been a sign.

  ~

  Three hours later, dawn not even a smell yet, William had two more dogs in the camper shell. Both Spaniel size. The third he had to go into town for, run down the address. It was a Lab, though, would hold enough to be worth the trouble.

  Now all he needed was a place to work.

  He stepped back up onto the interstate, knew immediately where he was, where the rest stops were each way, and it was comfortable, right. He kept the Chevy at sixty-five, let the big trucks slam past him for Florida, and blinked his lights, letting them pull back into his lane.

  It was during one such black moment—headlights off—that the lightbar flared up behind him.

  He touched his brakes, pulled his lights back on, and coasted to the side.

  The cop followed his flashlight along the side of the truck, stood at an angle to the window William had already rolled down. The light played across both of William’s hands, gripped onto the wheel in plain sight. The back of them was white, dusted with the same hair his forearm was. The palms were black with blood, from the Lab.

  “Sir,” the cop said.

  “Officer?” William said back, turning his eyes from the light.

  It was the same cop from the bear. The cop who knew the Ford. It was his county, his stretch of the interstate.

  “I do something . . ?” William led off.

  The officer had his beam of light shining pale through the tinted side window of the camper. And then he got the smell from the cab, stepped back, his hand falling to the butt of his gun.

  “What the hell—?” he said.

  William shrugged.

  “Dogs,” he said, and pushed back into the bench seat, giving the officer a better angle on the puppies in the floorboard. The cardboard barrier William had cut, to keep them from the pedals.

  The cop was breathing hard now, trying to.

  “Where—where?”

  “Weimeraners,” William said, a half lie. “Delivering them for my sister.”

  “Your sister?”

  William hooked his chin up the road.

  “Not crossing any state lines,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

  The cop blinked, wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve, and tapped his flashlight against the camper.

  William kept his hands on the wheel, looked through the sliding glass behind him.

  The other dogs were back there. They were moving, undulating, as if asleep: Julia, kicking slow under the tarp“Those ones are mine,” William said.

  “All of them?”

  Through the tinted side glass, the blood on the two smaller dogs’ coats would be the liver stains of a Springer Spaniel. And the bigger two dogs were black.

  William nodded.

  “Shouldn’t they be—awake?” the cop said, tapping the glass again.

  William smiled, caught.

  “Benadryl,” he said. “I should give them Dramamine, I know, but shit. You know what that costs?”

  “Allergy medicine?”

  William nodded, almost snapped, pictured the blood from the Lab spattering from his fingers to his face.

  “Knocks ’em dead,” he said, shrugging.

  “Serious?”

  “You should try it.”

  The cop flashed the light along the dashboard, to the one silver can. He held the light there, looked at William.

  “Do I need to check your license, sir?” he asked.

  “It’s old,” William said, then took a chance, dropped one hand into shadow and leaned over to the window, as if reaching for his wallet. “But if you want . . ?”

  The cop started to step closer, breathed in the puppy shit again, and gagged, stepped out into the highway, and, without even thinking about it, William reached out through the window, pulled him back over, a Kenworth sucking past, its chrome mirror nearly skimming the camper shell, rocking the truck.

  The cop tried to breathe, couldn’t.

  There was blood on his sleeve, now, from William’s hand. On the black fabric.

  He finally sucked in enough air to talk. His eyes wet, swimming.

  “I know you,” he said, leaning on the truck, watching the road behind his cruiser.

  “The bear,” William said.

  The cop nodded.

  “Whatever happened to it?” William said.

  The cop lifted his head at the interstate, the truckers. “Them,” he said, his lips already thinning. “It must have been alive, crawled back up there for one more round or some shit.”

  William nodded, leaned over to spit. The cop almost stepped back to let him, then just moved a little farther along the side of the truck instead.

  It was all William could do not to smile.

  The cop felt it too, just at the corners of his mouth, then patted William on the arm, told him to be safe, and extended his hand for a shake. But the twelve-inch light was still in it. Still on. And then he held it there.

  William followed the pale beam.

  Maybe sixty feet out, where the light started scattering into motes, was a tall black dog, her teats heavy with milk.

  She was staring back along the beam of light.

  The cop hissed through his teeth then took the light back, and told William to be safe. William nodded, watched the cop in the mirror, feeling along the side of the truck then disappearing behind it, walking as far in the ditch as he could back to his cruiser. Crawling in the passenger side.

  He rolled the lights across his bar once in farewell, accelerated evenly into the night.

  Minutes after he was gone, William pulled his headlights back on.

  The dog was still there, watching him.

  “Okay then, little momma,” William said, and started easing the Chevy forward.

  ~

  She was another sign, led him first onto the service road then to a copse of trees. Buried in the trees was a trailer house, burned out. The same one.

  William shook his head no, no, that you don’t do this, you don’t ever come back to the same place, even if it’s a perfect place, but she wasn’t listening, had already lowered herself under the trailer’s torn skirt.

>   He backed the Chevy to where he’d backed over Marissa’s head three times. There were ruts from it almost—a shallow depression, like the earth remembered.

  No lights, no nothing.

  Just fast. It had to be fast.

  But not like before, either. Not like when something had been watching from the front door of the trailer.

  In six trips, William carried in the four dead dogs, the armful of puppies, and Julia. She was still breathing, but it was like she was having to remind herself to.

  William nodded, kept nodding, and rested her down onto the mildewed couch. The dogs were already on the floor, the Shepherd’s head lolling most of the way off, both ears still alert. A sorry state of affairs, but William would make do. He always had.

  The seventh trip he made was for a six-pack of beer.

  He stood over the hole where the sink had been and drank them one by one, dropping his cans down into the cabinet then digging them out to wipe his prints off. Walking back and forth from the Shepherd on the floor. Trying to fit the head back on. Telling himself it wasn’t important but then caping it out some anyway, like a trophy. Reaching up into the skull to drag more out, enough that a section of leg might fit up there now. Always room for more.

  He was on the fifth beer, breathing hard, almost ready, telling himself he didn’t have time for Julia anymore but rubbing himself all the same, when one of the puppies rolled into her couch and he understood the whole, stupid night: the mother dog under the trailer, she was the one from the pound. The one whose puppies had been taken away. They’d killed her but she’d lived through it, and now here he was, with a whole, starving litter of ghost pups.

  William smiled, left the beer half full on the counter.

  He stepped down from the front door, off the wood somebody had stacked up as a staircase, and lowered himself to look under the skirt, snapped his fingers for her to come. She wouldn’t, though. Wouldn’t even growl, didn’t care about whistles or promises.

  William stood, not mad. Not anything, really.

  “Julia,” he called through the front door, sing-song, “Julia, I think she’s hungry, dear,” then stepped up, cut a perfect coin of meat from the palm of her right hand. Like a slice of pepperoni. He stood and her hand closed over the pain, and he thanked her, really meant it.

  Down at the skirt again, he held the coin of meat into the darkness, but still the little momma wouldn’t come, even when he left it there. So he kicked the trailer and hit it and spit on it. When he lowered himself to the skirt again, though, the coin was gone, and he smiled.

  She understood.

  William nodded, tuned in for a moment to a recap flapping on the interstate; his radio, leaking country music; his beer on the counter inside, fizzing down.

  This was going to be even better, this was the next thing: before, he’d just been putting the girls in the dogs. Now, though—now he could feed them to the dogs. Julia, at least. And then, and then she could nurse the puppy he chose, and in that way it would be a perfect circle.

  William knew he was rubbing himself again but couldn’t help it, this was so good.

  But then the skirt of the trailer, the very edge of the tin, dipped down into the surface of the ground.

  William cocked his head to the side, not getting it, then followed the skirt up to the trailer, then to the door. The perfect pair of caramel legs there. The one breast pointing out into the night.

  “Julia,” he said, in his other voice, “I was just about to—” and then saw all the way up her, and fell back, never felt the ground.

  It was Julia, but not. Julia, naked but for blood. Julia, with the dog head that had lolled off. The Shepherd. She’d pulled it down over her own somehow.

  William felt his breath tremor in his chest, tried to smile, couldn’t come close.

  “Julia,” he said again, and then she was stepping down, the black dog under the trailer exploding from the darkness, the square-headed grey puppies spilling around Julia’s feet, down the rotten steps.

  William pushed himself back through the dirt, tried to laugh at himself, at this, at her. Her gone-breast was leaking down her body, the fingers of the hand he’d cut the coin from dripping black. The eyes of the dog head watching him like a god, unblinking.

  William laughed through his nose, wiped his eyes, and shook his head no to her now.

  She had a hand to each side of the door jamb, was stepping down.

  Laughing with no sound, William slashed the air with his razor but it was weak, nothing.

  She lowered herself from the doorway to the dirt, leading with her good foot, the placement so deliberate that William suddenly felt what was happening here. Why. That it was time. That, after sixteen, seventeen girls, it was time. He nodded his head to her—yes, yes, this. He was ready.

  “Please,” he said to her, lifting his chin so she could have his throat, “please, I’m sorry,” and then the dog head looked down at him with its dry eyes, knew him all at once, saw him in his cowboy hat, hiding in all the cushions of the couch, and he started throwing up down his chest, pushing back again, away from her, from it, and the body that had been Julia took one more step, no doorway to lean on now, and folded over the bad foot. Onto William. Her warm breath on his inner thigh, through the denim. The dog head nosing into his navel. William’s whole body trembling, neck jerking, cheek stubble wet with tears.

  He was alive.

  She had spared him. She was forgiving him.

  He breathed in, out, made a sound with his voice just to see if he still could. Felt his own nipples swelling with a sort of milk he could feed her with if she wanted.

  Everything made sense.

  Except then she growled.

  From the Shepherd’s mouth.

  Instead of standing up like the woman she’d been, she pushed up onto her bowing-out arms, raised her heavy head to study him. To taste the air for him.

  William kicked out from under her and she stayed crouched like that, on all fours. The Shepherd head just watching him.

  “No, no, no,” William said to it quietly, and the little momma dog under the trailer snarled back there in her wet darkness, and the puppies boiling in the doorway screamed with the voices of sixteen women, and William drew a sharp line across his left nipple with the razor, his own fluids spilling down his front, into his lap, in offering.

  She just stared at him.

  “Julia?” William said.

  In reply, she took her first step, her right arm reaching out for the ground.

  William pushed back farther, still shaking his head no, and a second before she lunged forward off her hind legs, he was turned, crawling into a blind run.

  Billy Billy Billy the Kid, she said in his head, in her dog voice, and William leaned forward, deeper into the night, and the puppies and the trailer and his truck fell away behind them, and the one time William looked back, Julia’s new mouth was moving, her teeth shiny wet and curving in and in, and this isn’t one of those stories where the killer is chased by his own guilt out into the road to get run down by a truck his father could be driving, it’s one of those stories where you understand that no matter how fast a man runs, a dog can run faster. Especially when she’s hungry.

  No Takebacks

  1.

  We didn’t build the app to kill anybody.

  It wasn’t even our idea to build it, exactly. One day RJ’s dad was just standing there in the kitchen with us after his work, and he pretty much foisted the idea on us. His tie was two-fingers loose and he was digging in the refrigerator for a beer. RJ and me were sitting on the island (me) and the counter (him), texting. Or, if I’m going to be honest here, for the first time in somewhat-recorded history, we were pretending to text.

  That beer, RJ’s dad was sure, had been there this morning?

  Yeah.

  Anyway, he finally settled on some orange juice straight from the carton, and then he was just standing there with us like I said, doing that thing where he thinks we’re all hang
ing out, being cool. At least he tries, though, right? More than I can say for my dad, who runs the house like a military barracks, telling us when we can and can’t be at ease, soldiers. Interrogating me about my plans for the future if he ever finds me just sitting on the counter one fine lazy summer day.

  To be specific, and blip back to RJ’s kitchen, the last fine lazy summer day before senior year started.

  “So . . . ” RJ’s dad said, wiping the extra-pulpy orange juice from his top lip, “what are you two troublemakers brewing up this particular afternoon, now?”

  I didn’t look up, couldn’t, was too busy processing his ‘brewing’ and what it might or might not mean. Whether it was some kind of coded approval or explicit accusation or what.

  “You know,” RJ answered for both of us, shrugging to make it stick.

  RJ’s dad nodded, took another deep glug, and then asked if we had that red light, green light one yet?

  We looked up to him with reptile eyes.

  “That app,” he said, about the phones we were still working, and his eyes, they were all glittery with possibility.

  I did a short little mental groan, here. Kind of squinted in anticipation. Talking software outside your age group always feels like trying to use sign language through the bars of the gorilla cage.

  “It’s free, see,” RJ’s dad went on, “this computer kid from Palmdale, he made it for his little sister one afternoon, because he was supposed to be babysitting her but wanted to play online or something. There’s an article in the paper today, yeah?”

  “The paper,” RJ repeated, his sentence the blade on some construction tractor, scraping bottom.

  His dad was impervious, though. Had too much momentum. Was probably going to say ‘computer kid’ again, even.

  “All you do is stop moving the phone when the light goes red, then on green light you—”

  “Cool,” I said, sliding down from the island. “Red light, green light, right?”

  I pretended to be calling it up on my phone. On the way out.

  “Not really,” RJ’s dad said, his tone downshifting a bit. “But that’s not the point. The point is that that app, it’s the new babysitter. All the parents are downloading it for their babies now. Three hundred thousand so far. And counting.”