Draculas

by J. A. Konrath

  According to her Internet research, 491 (previously 666) ranked as the third least traveled highway in the Lower-Forty-Eight, with an average of four cars passing a fixed point any given hour. Less of course at night. The downside of hitchhiking these little-known thoroughfares was the waiting, but the upside paid generous dividends in privacy.

  She exhaled a steaming breath and looked around. Painfully blue sky. Treeless high desert. Mountains thirty miles east. A further range to the northwest. They stood blanketed in snow, and on some level she understood that others would find them dramatic and beautiful, and she wondered what it felt like to be moved by nature.

  Two hours later, she lifted her guitar case and walked up the shoulder toward the idling Subaru Outback, heard the front passenger window humming down. She mustered a faint smile as she reached the door. Two young men in the front seats stared at her. They seemed roughly her age and friendly enough, if a little hungover. Open cans of Bud in the center console drink holders had perfumed the interior with the sour stench of beer--a good omen, she thought. Might make things easier.

  "Where you headed?" the driver asked. He had sandy hair and an elaborate goatee. Impressive cords of bicep strained the cotton fibers of his muscle shirt. The passenger looked native--dark hair and eyes, brown skin, a thin, implausible mustache.

  "Salt Lake," she said.

  "We're going to Tahoe. We could take you at least to I-15."

  She surveyed the rear storage compartment--crammed with two snowboards and the requisite boots, parkas, snow pants, goggles, and...she suppressed the jolt of pleasure--helmets. She hadn't thought of that before.

  A duffle bag took up the left side of the backseat. A little tight, but then she stood just five feet in her pink crocs. She could manage.

  "Comfortable back there?" the driver asked.

  "Yes."

  Their eyes met in the rearview mirror.

  "What's your name?"

  "Lucy."

  "Lucy, I'm Matt. This is Kenny. We were just about to have us a morning toke before we picked you up. Would it bother you if we did?"

  "Not at all."

  "Pack that pipe, bro."

  They got high as they crossed into Utah and became talkative and philosophically confident. They offered her some pot, but she declined. It grew hot in the car and she removed her hat and unbuttoned her black trench coat, breathing the fresh air coming in through the crack at the top of the window.

  "So where you going?" the Indian asked her.

  "Salt Lake."

  "I already asked her that, bro."

  "No, I mean what for?"

  "See some family."

  "We're going to Tahoe. Do some snowboarding at Heavenly."

  "Already told her that, bro."

  The two men broke up into laughter.

  "So you play guitar, huh?" Kenny said.

  "Yes."

  "Wanna strum something for us?"

  "Not just yet."

  They stopped at a filling station in Moab. Matt pumped gas and Kenny went inside the convenience store to procure the substantial list of snacks they'd been obsessing on for the last hour. When Matt walked inside to pay, she opened the guitar case and took out the syringe. The smell wafted out--not overpowering by any means, but she wondered if the boys would notice. She hadn't had a chance to properly clean everything in awhile. Lucy reached up between the seats and tested the weight of the two Budweisers in the drink holders: each about half-full. She eyed the entrance to the store--no one coming--and shot a squirt from the syringe into the mouth of each can.

  Kenny cracked a can of Bud and said, "Dude, was that shit laced?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  They sped through a country of red rock and buttes and waterless arroyos.

  "What we smoked."

  "I don't think so."

  "Man, I don't feel right. Where'd you get it?"

  "From Tim. Same as always."

  Lucy leaned forward and studied the double yellow line through the windshield. After Matt drifted across for a third time, she said, "Would you pull over please?"

  "What's wrong?"

  "I'm going to be sick."

  "Oh God, don't puke on our shit."

  Matt pulled over onto the shoulder and Lucy opened her door and stumbled out. As she worked her way down a gentle embankment making fake retching sounds, she heard Matt saying, "Dude? Dude? Come on, dude! Wake up, dude!"

  She waited in the bed of the arroyo for ten minutes and then started back up the hill toward the car. Matt had slumped across the center console into Kenny's lap. The man probably weighed two hundred pounds, and it took Lucy ten minutes to shove him, millimeter by millimeter, into the passenger seat on top of Kenny. She climbed in behind the wheel and slid the seat all the way forward and cranked the engine.

  She turned off of I-70 onto 24. According to her map, this stretch of highway ran forty-four miles to a nothing town called Hanksville. From her experience, it didn't get much quieter than this barren, lifeless waste of countryside.

  Ten miles south, she veered onto a dirt road and followed it the length of several football fields, until the highway was almost lost to sight. She killed the engine, stepped out. Late afternoon. Windless. Soundless. The boys would be waking soon, and she was already starting to glow. She opened the guitar case and retrieved the syringe, gave Kenny and Matt another healthy dose.

  By the time she'd wrangled them out of the car into the desert, dusk had fallen and she'd drenched herself in sweat. She rolled the men onto their backs and splayed out their arms and legs so they appeared to be making snow angels in the dirt.

  Lucy removed their shoes and socks. The pair of scissors was the kind used to cut raw chicken, with thick, serrated blades. She trimmed off their shirts and cut away their pants and underwear.

  Kenny and Matt had returned to full, roaring consciousness by 1:15 A.M. Naked. Ankles and wrists tightly bound with deeply scuffed handcuffs, heads helmeted, staring at the small, plain hitchhiker who squatted down facing them at the back of the car, blinding them with a hand held spotlight.

  "I didn't think you were ever going to wake up," Lucy said.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Matt looked angry.

  Kenny said, "These cuffs hurt. Get them off."

  She held a locking carabiner attached to a chain that ran underneath the Subaru. She clipped it onto another pair of carabiners. A rope fed through each one, and the ends of the ropes had been tied to the handcuffs on the boys' ankles.

  "Oh my God, she's crazy, dude."

  "Lucy, please. Don't. We'll give you anything you want. We won't tell anyone."

  She smiled. "That's really sweet of you, Matt, but this is what I want. Kind of have my heart set on it."

  She stepped over the tangle of chain and rope and moved toward the driver's door as the boys hollered after her.

  She left the hatch open so she could hear them. Kept looking back as she drove slowly, so slowly, along the dirt road. They were still begging her, and occasionally yelling when they dragged over a rock or a cactus, but she got them to the shoulder of Highway 24 with only minor injuries.

  The moon was up and nearly full. She could see five miles of the road in either direction, so perfectly empty and black, and she wondered if the way it touched her in this moment felt anything like how the beauty of the those mountains she'd seen this morning touched normal people.

  Lucy buckled her seatbelt and glanced in the rearview mirror. Matt had climbed to his feet, and he hobbled toward the car.

  "Hey, no fair!" she yelled and gave the accelerator a little gas, jerking his feet out from under him. "All right, count of three. We'll start small with half a mile!"

  She grasped the steering wheel, heart pumping. She'd done this a half dozen times but never with helmets.

  "One! Two! Three!"

  She reset the odometer and eased onto the accelerator. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty miles per hour, and the boys already beginning to scream. At four
-tenths of a mile, she hit forty, and in the rearview mirror, Kenny's and Matt's pale and naked bodies writhed in full-throated agony, both trying to sit up and grab the rope and failing as they slid across the pavement on their bare backs, dragged by their cuffed ankles, the chains throwing gorgeous yellow sparks against the asphalt.

  She eased off the gas and pulled over onto the shoulder. Collected the spray bottle from the guitar case, unbuckled, jumped out, and went to the boys. They lay on their backs, blood pooling beneath them. Kenny must have rolled briefly onto his right elbow, because it had been sanded down to bone.

  "Please," Matt croaked. "Please."

  "You don't know how beautiful you look," she said, "but I'm gonna make you even prettier." She spritzed them with pure, organic lemon juice, especially their backs, and to the heartwarming depth of their new screams, skipped back to the car and hopped in and stomped the gas, their cries rising into something like the baying of hounds, Lucy howling back. She pushed the Subaru past fifty, to sixty, to seventy-five, and in the illumination of the spotlight, the boys bounced along the pavement, on their backs, their sides, their stomachs, and with every passing second looking more and more lovely, and still making those delicious screams she could almost taste, Lucy driving with no headlights, doing eighty under the moon, and the cold winter wind rushing through the windows like the breath of God.

  She made it five miles (no one had ever lasted five miles and she credited those well-made snowboarding helmets) before the skeletons finally went quiet.

  Lucy ditched what was left of the boys and drove all night like she'd done six blasts of coke, arriving in Salt Lake as the sun edged up over the mountains. She checked into a Red Roof Inn and ran a hot bath and cleaned the new blood and the old blood out of the ropes and let the carabiners and the chains and the handcuffs soak in the soapy water.

  In the evening she awoke, that dark weight perched on her chest again. The guitar case items had dried, and she packed them away and dressed and headed out. The motel stood along the interstate, and it came down to Applebee's or Chili's.

  She went with the latter, because she loved their Awesome Blossom.

  After dinner, she walked outside and stared at the Subaru in the parking lot, the black rot flooding back inside of her, that restless, awful energy that could never be fully sated, those seconds of release never fully quenching, like water tinged with salt. She turned away from the Subaru and walked along the frontage road until she came to a hole in the fence. Ducked through. Scrambled down to the shoulder of the interstate.

  Traffic was moderate, the night cold and starry. A line of cars approached, bottled up behind a Winnebago.

  She walked under the bridge, set down her guitar case, and stuck out her thumb.

  3

  Donaldson pulled over onto the shoulder and lowered the passenger window. The girl was young and tiny, wearing a wool cap despite the relative warmth.

  "Where you headed?" He winked before he said it, his smile genuine.

  "Missoula," Lucy answered.

  "Got a gig up there?" He pointed his chin at her guitar case.

  She shrugged.

  "Well, I'm going north. If you chip in for gas, and promise not to sing any show tunes, you can hop in."

  The girl seemed to consider it, then nodded. She opened the rear door and awkwardly fit the guitar case onto the backseat. Before getting in, she stared at the upholstery on the front seats.

  "What's with the plastic?" she asked, indicating Donaldson's clear seat covers.

  "Sometimes I travel with my dog."

  Lucy squinted at the picture taped to the dashboard--the portly driver holding a long-haired dachshund.

  "What's its name?"

  "Scamp. Loveable little guy. Hates it when I'm away. But I'm away a lot. I'm a courier. Right now, I'm headed up to Idaho Falls to pick up a donor kidney."

  Her eyes flitted to the backseat, to a cooler with a biohazard sign on the lid.

  "Don't worry," he said, taking off his hat and rubbing a hand through his thinning gray hair. "It's empty for the time being."

  The girl nodded, started to get in, then stopped. "Would you mind if I sat in the back? I don't want to make you feel like a chauffeur, but I get nauseated riding up front unless I'm driving."

  Donaldson paused. "Normally I wouldn't mind, Miss, but I don't have any seat belts back there, and I insist my passengers wear one. Safety first, I always say."

  "Of course. Can't be too careful. Cars can be dangerous."

  "Indeed they can. Indeed."

  The front passenger door squeaked open, and the girl hopped in. Donaldson watched her buckle up, and then he accelerated back onto the highway.

  Grinning at her, he rubbed his chin and asked, "So what's your name, little lady?"

  "I'm Lucy." She looked down at the center console. A Big Gulp sweated in the drink holder. She reached into her pocket and looked at the man and smiled. "I really appreciate you picking me up. I don't think I caught your name."

  "Donaldson. Pleased to meet you."

  "Is that really your last name, or are you one of those guys who have a last name for a first name?"

  "No, that's my first."

  They drove in silence for a mile, Donaldson glancing between the girl and the road.

  "Highway's packed this time of day. I bet we'd make better time on the county roads. Less traffic. If that's okay with you, of course."

  "I was actually just going to suggest that," Lucy said. "Weird."

  "Well, I wouldn't want to do anything to make you feel uncomfortable." Donaldson glanced down at Lucy's pocket. "Pretty young thing like yourself might get nervous driving off the main drag. In fact, you don't see many young lady hitchers these days. I think horror movies scared them all away. Everyone's worried about climbing into the car with a maniac."

  Donaldson chuckled.

  "I love county roads," Lucy said. "Much prettier scenery, don't you think?"

  He nodded, taking the next exit, and Lucy leaned over, almost into his lap, and glanced at the gas gauge.

  "You're running pretty low there. Your reserve light's on. Why don't we stop at this gas station up ahead. I'll put twenty in the tank. I also need something to drink. This mountain air is making my throat dry."

  Donaldson shifted in his seat. "Oh, that light just came on, and I can get fifty miles on reserve. This is a Honda, you know."

  "But why push our luck? And I'm really thirsty, Donaldson."

  "Here." He lifted his Big Gulp. "It's still half full."

  "No offense, but I don't drink after strangers, and I um...this is embarrassing...I have a cold sore in my mouth."

  The gas station was coming up fast, and by all accounts it appeared to be the last stop before the county road started its climb into the mountains, into darkness.

  "Who am I to say no to a lady?" Donaldson said.

  He tapped the brakes and coasted into the station. It had probably been there for forty years, and hadn't updated since then. Donaldson sidled up to an old-school pump--one with a meter where the numbers actually scrolled up, built way back when closed-circuit cameras were something out of a science fiction magazine.

  Donaldson peered over Lucy, into the small store. A bored female clerk sat behind the counter, apparently asleep. White trash punching the minimum wage clock, not one to pay much attention.

  "The tank's on your side," Donaldson said. "I don't think these old ones take credit cards."

  "I can pay cash inside. I buy, you fly."

  Donaldson nodded. "Okay. I'm fine with doin' the pumpin'. Twenty, you said?"

  "Yeah. You want anything?"

  "If they have any gum that isn't older than I am, pick me up a pack. I've got an odd taste in my mouth for some reason."

  Lucy got out of the car. Donaldson opened the glove compartment and quickly shoved something into his coat pocket. Then he set the parking brake, pocketed the keys, and followed her out.

  While Donaldson stood pumping gas into the
Honda, Lucy walked across the oil-stained pavement and into the store. The clerk didn't acknowledge her entrance, just sat staring at a small black-and-white television airing Jeopardy, her chin propped up in her hand and a Marlboro Red with a one-inch ash trailing smoke toward the ceiling.

  Lucy walked down the aisle to the back of the store and picked a Red Bull out of the refrigerated case. At the drink fountain, she went with the smallest size--sixteen ounces--and filled the cup with ice to the brim, followed by a little Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, Pepsi, and Orange Fanta.