Dead Man's Drive: A Rot Rods Novel (Rot Rods #1)

by Michael Panush

  Betty gunned the motor. Roscoe stared at her. “Betty, what are you― “

  “I’m not letting this town become a battlefield again,” she said. “We’re going in.”

  She let off the brake. The coupe shot forward straight for the crystal fence. The hood crashed its way through, sending crystal flakes flying through the air. Roscoe gritted his teeth at the impact. Betty swerved after they rammed through. Pink chunks bounced off the hood and cracked the windshield. Betty spun the cart to the side and planted the coupe’s nose straight into a tree.

  The tree stood right in front of the police station―a little domed structure that looked like the architect had clumsily tried to replicate a Grecian temple. Sheriff Leland Braddock, a plump fellow in an ill-fitting uniform, rested on the steps with pump-action shotgun in hand, backed-up by two terrified deputies. Dr. Bolton, still in handcuffs, stood behind him. Roscoe stepped out and grabbed his sawed-off shotgun. He waved to the sheriff.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “We’re not doing so good, Roscoe!” Sheriff Braddock wailed. “These crystal shards poked into Bolton’s cell.. We had to get him out of there. Thank Christ he was the only prisoner in the place. Now more crystals have been springing up and― Judas Priest!” He pointed back at the spires emerging from the ground. Roscoe turned, sawed-off at the ready.

  The crystals shattered. They cracked like egg shells, the fragments raining down, and creatures slipped out of the cracks. Roscoe had fought them before―the Crystal Creeps that had served Mars during his previous incursion in La Cruz. These seemed to be a different variety, a subspecies. They had the size and shape of chimpanzees, but were covered with spiky, crystalline skin with jagged edges. They looked like odd statues, unfinished and waiting for the points to be smoothed down. Moving like apes, they darted from their broken prisons on hands and knuckles. Some had spikes projecting from their wrists or swinging, club-tipped tails. Roscoe counted about a dozen, all converging on the steps of the police station.

  He turned back to Betty and the cops. “Stay back, protect Dr. Bolton.” Then he leveled his sawed-off at the Creeps and walked forward, reaching down to his belt to grab his crowbar. “Hey!” he called. “Why don’t you guys head back into your crystals and return to the underground. I got a feeling it’ll be safer.”

  The Creeps turned to face him. They hissed a musical piping sound that seemed like an orchestra warming up―then charged. The Crystal Creeps swarmed towards Roscoe, racing together over the pavement. Roscoe fired both barrels, one after the other. His first shot tore a Crystal Creep in half, scattering stones across the street. His second shot removed the head of another, shattering the beast’s face into a hundred little spikes. Then they reached him. Roscoe tucked the gun into his coat and gripped out his crowbar. He swung the pronged edge down, smashing the Crystal Creeps with each blow. Their claws slashed and gouged his legs. One Creep bit down on his foot, razor-sharp diamond teeth digging into his skin. Roscoe howled and caved in the Creep’s skull. Then another jumped onto his back and went for his throat. Roscoe grabbed the Creep’s head and pushed it away from his neck. The Creep’s teeth pierced his fingers and spiked the skin.

  “Roscoe!” Betty’s snub-nosed revolver popped and the Creep’s back split. It sank down, crashing to the street and shattering. Betty hurried closer, backed up by Sheriff Braddock and his two deputies – as soon as they overcame their surprise. They moved in, giving Roscoe some cover. He scrambled back, swinging crowbar holding the Creeps at bay. He smashed two more creatures, sending a spray of crystalline gore onto the road. Betty’s revolver flashed as she punched all six shots into the Creeps and then grabbed Roscoe’s arms and tugged him towards the stairs.

  Roscoe grinned. “I’m okay, sister. Just a little exercise.”

  “They’re going to overwhelm us, Roscoe,” Betty said. She snapped open her revolver and reached for extra bullets. Betty’s thin fingers slid them in one after the next without dropping any. She might not have been a natural around firearms, but she’d had plenty of practice. “We need to fall back to the sheriff’s office and protect Dr. Bolton, okay?”

  “Don’t worry.” Roscoe pointed to the adjoining road. “The cavalry’s arrived.”

  As he spoke, the Packard smashed through the remains of crystalline fence in a spray of shards. The paint had been chipped to hell and the sides had countless dents. More Creeps and spires had doubtlessly blocked their path, but Wooster and Angel had arrived ready for the fight. Wooster aimed his Thompson at the Crystal Creeps and gave them a long rattling salvo. Angel hurried next to Betty and Roscoe. Crystal Creeps leapt up, trying to pounce on them. Angel brought up both pistols and unloaded, each automatic thundering away. Crystal pieces rained on the ground and the musical roars of the creatures became pained and wild. Sheriff Braddock and his deputies joined in, keeping up the fire.

  Wooster advanced, firing bursts from the hip. “You doing all right there, Roscoe?”

  “Fine.” Roscoe cracked open his sawed-off and slid in two more shells. He snapped the gun shut and gave both barrels to the Creeps. “These little bastards need to learn a lesson. I guess we’re teaching them.” He grinned at Angel. “Maybe those Crystal Gods ain’t that bright after all.”

  “Maybe they just don’t mind dying,” Angel said.

  Then Betty pointed down the road. “Oh no,” she muttered. “The Creeps―they were just a diversion!”

  Roscoe twisted around, just in time to see the pearl-colored limousine come speeding around the corner. The Buicks flanked it, with Crystal Church worshipers standing on the runners, armed with rifles. They took aim at Roscoe and his friends, and the deputies—covering them completely. The Creeps still hadn’t let up their assault, occupying everyone’s attention. The limousine sped to the side of the Sheriff’s Department, rolling onto the grass and coming to a halt just by the long marble steps.

  Roscoe groaned and reloaded. “Keep holding off the Creeps. I’ll deal with Mars.”

  Sheriff Braddock winced as he fumbled to reload. “Sure, Roscoe. This is your business – you’re the expert here.”

  Betty glanced at him as she raised her pistol. “You sure you can handle him, Roscoe? He is a prophet, after all―and he’s got plenty of supporters.”

  “He’s a bearded nut,” Roscoe said. “And I’m a dead man.”

  He sprang back, leaving the firing line and running down the stairs. His friends and Sheriff Braddock put down some covering fire, but had to fall back to avoid the cultists’ bullets.

  Mars stood at the bottom of the stairs and held out his hands. “Bolton!” he roared, his voice booming. His voice softened as Bolton spotted him. “Come to me, my son.” Mars ordered and Bolton listened.

  He crept down the steps, hanging his head. The deputies stood back, terrified, and let him slip away. He hurried into Mars’s arms. Mars embraced tightly and kissed his forehead. “Head to the limousine,” he bellowed. “There is great work to be done.”

  That’s when Roscoe reached them at the base of the stairs. He charged towards Mars, raising his sawed-off. The cultists opened fire and Roscoe caught a slug somewhere in the gut and another in the shoulder. Bullets whined past him and he felt them go in, cutting tunnels through his body and making him stumble. But he still grabbed Mars’ shoulder and rammed the sawed-off into the cult leader’s side. Mars didn’t seem surprised.

  “I’m afraid Dr. Bolton’s staying put,” Roscoe grumbled.

  Mars turned back to Roscoe. “You don’t know what we are trying to accomplish. You do not know what we will bring about.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “No, dead man―you care.” Too late, Roscoe noticed Mars’s hands tighten on the pointed crystal skewer that served as his walking stick. “Because I am going to give you exactly what it is you really want. I am going to give you total and eternal war.”

  He swung the spire up and plunged it into Roscoe’s chest. The zombie gagged as the staff stabbed through him and poked ou
t between his shoulder blades. He stumbled back, breath coming involuntarily into his lungs. They inflated and closed, pushing out dead air that he didn’t need. He stumbled and sank down to his knees. Roscoe glanced up, staring into the cold eyes of Townsend Mars.

  The cult leader patted Roscoe’s head. “War, my son. Soon.” He kicked Roscoe and knocked him down.

  Roscoe struck the cement. The crystal remained wedged inside, fused into his skin and holding him down like he had been nailed to the floor. Betty and Angel shouted his name, but they sounded far away. He kept breathing and his eyes closed. Everything became fuzzy and indistinct.

  Roscoe slipped away.

  He fell into the memories of the man he once was. These flashbacks were nothing new. Roscoe had learned sometime last year, after old faces from the past had come back to try and take over La Cruz. But now, he lived them again. He was Carmine Vitale, a Sicilian-born hood with an aptitude for motors and murder. He came to America as a kid, grew up a punk and ran errands for hoodlums in Boyle Heights and Bunker Hill until he got pinched and went to fight the war in Sicily. After killing Nazis and fascist Italians for a year or two, the military let him go and he became a full time button man. Vitale would never have stopped―if he hadn’t have fallen in love with the don’s wife. They made a plan to steal her husband’s money and split. Carmine just had to do one more job.

  It was a hit on a small time gambler who owed too much money and needed to be turned into an example. But his mother was a fortune teller, a strega from the Old Country. Carmine killed her son in front of her and she cursed him―making his body as dead as his soul. The next day, Carmine got another job in La Cruz. Two of the don’s torpedoes took him there. That’s when Carmine realized that the don had found out the truth about his wife and his top shooter. He was the target. He pulled a weapon, but the torpedoes gunned him down and left him in a ditch on the road. Carmine died with their last words ringing in his ears: “he’s got a roscoe!” Hours later, Roscoe found himself awake, and shambled down the road until Angel crashed into him. The Captain had taken him in. He’d worked with them ever since.

  Roscoe didn’t like to remember Carmine Vitale. All of Carmine’s villainies―his sadism, his rage, his love of carnage―came floating back and infected him once again. Roscoe considered himself his own person, free of Carmine Vitale and the past. He hated being reminded that wasn’t true. But the crystal staff did its job. Roscoe drifted through the memories until he found the pure and endless sleep that had been denied to him earlier.

  When consciousness finally came, Roscoe found himself lying on his bed in his room. His strength seeped back and he looked to the nightstand and found a thick submarine sandwich and a bottle of coke waiting for him. Then he looked down at his chest. Someone had removed his shirt and tied a set of clean bandages over the wound. Roscoe gave them a pat. He could feel the gaping hole in his chest, but it wasn’t particularly bad. He grabbed the sandwich and gobbled it down before he stood up and got dressed. A quick glance at the window revealed that it was morning―the morning after the Crystal Creeps attacked La Cruz. Roscoe slid on his leather jacket and licked mustard from his fingers, then hit the stairs and went to check up on his friends.

  Like he expected, they were in the kitchen along with Major Raskin and Special Agent Pruitt. The Captain sat at the end of the table, next to a map of the surrounding area. Felix stood next to him, looking it over. Wooster was grilling eggs while Betty flipped through a set of thick door-stopper books with Angel’s help. Snowball sat on his cushioned bed in the corner, biting a Milk-Bone nearly in half. All of them looked up when Roscoe walked in.

  Angel hurried to Roscoe’s side. “How you doing, man? All recovered?”

  “It was nothing,” Roscoe said, maybe a little too quickly. He nodded to Felix. “Doesn’t hurt at all. I’ve had bigger splinters.” He sat down and pointed to the counter. “You’re making eggs? I better eat a few. Scramble them and fill them up with whatever you got in this kitchen.”

  “You are sure you are well, Mr. Roscoe?” Felix asked.

  “Kiddo, I’m fine.” Roscoe turned to the Captain. “What’d you do with that crystal in my gut?”

  “Felix analyzed it,” the Captain said. “He came to some troubling conclusions.”

  “That is correct, sir,” Felix said. “The crystal is composed of no Earthly minerals. I have examined it at a microscopic level and could find no parallels with any minerals known to science. It must be extraterrestrial or supernatural in nature.”

  “Extraterrestrial,” Roscoe muttered. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “There’s more,” Betty said. “I’ve been researching Sir Caleb Craul―the spirit who allegedly contacted Townsend Mars during the Great Depression. He’s a real piece of work, into necromancy, sorcery and alchemy.” Betty patted one of the thick tomes. “According to this, Sir Caleb contacted beings that he called the offspring of demons and angels, which have been locked away under the earth. They taught him their sacred language which supposedly gave him power over the world.” She pointed to some yellowing pamphlets sporting pentagrams and curling snake designs. “His descendant, Cassius Craul, had quite a following in London and New York during the 1920s and 30s. I think he and Mars met a few times and Craul’s writings about contacting demons might have influenced him.” She glanced up, her eyes dark behind horn-rimmed spectacles. “They certainly influenced Dr. Bolton. He frequently read Cassius Craul’s texts and might’ve attended meetings of Craul’s followers in LA.”

  Angel looked up at Major Raskin. “You knew this Dr. Bolton guy was into the occult and still let him work on your rocket ships and high tech projects?”

  Major Raskin shrugged. “He was an extremely gifted engineer.”.

  “Yes,” the Captain said. “And you’ve allowed worse men to work on your rocket ships.” He pointed to Special Agent Pruitt. “Now, I take it we’re still under contract to locate Dr. Bolton and return him to you?”

  Special Agent Pruitt nodded. “Same terms as before, but don’t let him escape.”

  “That weren’t our doing, G-man,” Wooster said. “In case you’re sore about it, you can―”

  “Wooster.” A word from the Captain was all it took for Wooster to calm down. The Captain faced his drivers. “We’re going to find out where Mars took Dr. Bolton and recapture him. The greater Los Angeles area seems a reasonable place to start.” He pointed to Betty and Felix. “Miss Bright, Felix, I’d like you to continue researching Sir Caleb Craul, the Crystalline Church, and what you can of Dr. Bolton’s beliefs and studies. I’m sure you can turn up more vital facts.”

  “Sounds good,” Betty said. “We can go to my father’s house, have a look at his library.”

  “And I’ll accompany you, Miss Bright?” Felix asked.

  “Of course, honey,” Betty said.

  “Wunderbar!” Felix clapped his hands and his face reddened when everyone stared at him. “I will prepare my materials.” He skittered away from the table―pausing only to exchange a wave with Roscoe. Snowball bounced up and pattered after him.

  The Captain turned to Roscoe and Angel. “I want you two to investigate LA. Look for Dr. Bolton’s known associates and friends. Major Raskin can give you a list. Find all our allies―Morris Schlosser and Walt Weaver ―and see what they can turn up. I’ll expect you back in the evening with a full report.”

  “Got it,” Roscoe said. “I want Wooster to go with us, though. In a separate car, as backup.”

  It wasn’t exactly a counter-order, more of a suggestion. Roscoe had been making more and more suggestions lately and the Captain always listened to them. He nodded at this. “That’s a good idea. Wooster, procure an appropriate firearm. If they run into trouble, you’ll be the one to help them out.”

  “Sounds fine with me,” Wooster said, handing Roscoe the plate of eggs.

  “Thanks.” Roscoe grabbed a fork. “I’ll go outside and get the cars ready.” He stepped past the table and walked to the screen
door, then headed to the parking lot. Their autos stood in a neat row, ready to roll. Roscoe gnawed on the eggs as he walked, munching on cheese, onions, peppers, sausage and all the other ingredients Wooster had stuffed into the hastily made omelet. After a few seconds, Roscoe heard boots behind him. Wooster stepped out into the sun to join him. “Good omelet.”

  Wooster nodded. “My old man used to cook them on a sheet of steel, something fell off our car, over a big, roaring fire. He’d get these big old eggs he pinched from farm houses and fry them up nice. Burned them half the time, but we didn’t mind.” Wooster stood next to Roscoe. “What happened when that Mars fellow stabbed you with the crystal?”

  “I remembered,” Roscoe said. “Again. It came back to me. Carmine Vitale, my death, everything.”

  “Well, Roscoe, that’s a trouble everyone has,” Wooster said. “And we don’t got the luxury of being dead and making all our sins part of another life.” He patted Roscoe’s shoulder. “But somehow, we manage.”

  Angel came walking out of the garage next, sliding his pistols into his shoulder holsters. He tossed Roscoe the sawed-off. “Should we take my ride, man?”

  “Why not?” Roscoe nodded. “Wooster, you follow in the Packard. Don’t stay too close.” He headed for the red Cadillac, Angel at his side.

  Once again, they were off on a job. This time, Roscoe didn’t think it was going to be easy.

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