Alex got out and stretched. He wore a black Hawaiian shirt, patterned with white surfboards and palm trees, over a white T-shirt, and boot-cut blue jeans over a pair of snakeskin boots. Beneath the brim of his cowboy hat, mirrored aviators reflected the desert and the blue sky. He stood in a casual slouch, hands on hips, as he turned in a slow circle. The hot wind whispered low, rattling the sand amongst the sagebrush.
“Gol-damn, would you look at that.” He peered up at the canopy over the gas pumps.
The station looked like something out of a forgotten dream. Painted on the wall was a peeling, vintage Mobilgas logo, complete with Pegasus. The roof over the gas pumps had smoothly rounded corners with stainless-steel striping. The pumps beneath were ancient things, with analog gauges, square shoulders, and round signs on top, making them look like science fiction robots. Outside the station's small store stood a faded, old-fashioned Coca-Cola machine. Alex smiled. “This is some Leave it To Beaver shit right here.”
A man stepped out of the gas station. He was fit but approaching middle-age, Hispanic, with close-cropped hair and a broad nose above a black mustache. The patch on his blue coveralls read buck. A red rag protruded from his back pocket.
Buck looked the Ford over and whistled. “That's a nice car,” he said. “That a '54?”
“'55,” replied Alex.
“Damned nice. My dad had a '57, but it wasn't anything like this. I'm Buck,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Alex.” Alex shook his strong, calloused hand.
“Fill 'er up?” asked Buck.
“I could probably do it myself.”
“Nobody knows how to work these antique pumps anymore. It's just easier if I do it.” Buck opened the fuel door on the Ford and put the nozzle in. The breeze caught the faint scent of gasoline. “So, where you headed?”
“Right here, as a matter of fact. Visiting Prosperity for a day or two.”
Buck laughed. “No shit? You actually came to Prosperity on purpose? You know the state park closed, right?”
“Didn't even know there was a state park. Seems like a nice enough place; why's it so amazing that somebody wants to come here?”
Buck laughed softly. “Because nobody ever does. What brings you out this way?”
“Pretty boring, really. Just a bit of historical research.”
“I guess that makes sense,” said Buck. “The place is just about history.”
“How come y'all say that?”
Buck paused for a moment to gather his thoughts while the gas pump quietly chugged. “Let me put it to you this way,” he began. “There were three things that kept Prosperity going—the interstate, the state park, and the gypsum quarry. First, they moved the interstate, so now we're on a useless little stretch of road that goes from nowhere to nowhere, and there's another road that gets there quicker. Then they closed down the gypsum quarry. And if that wasn't bad enough, budget cuts closed down the state park. There isn't shit here anymore. They're even closing down the high school. They don't have enough students. The last class graduated a month ago. For the most part, people don't come here unless they're lost. If it wasn't for the festival, I'd probably be out of business already.”
Alex cocked his head. “Festival?”
“Oh yeah, the Transcendence Festival. Bunch of hippies go out in the desert every year to run around naked and do drugs. Right on the other side of those hills. If you listen close and the wind is right, you can hear the music from here.” Buck made air quotes when he said music. “They annoy the shit out of me, but at least they've got money to spend.”
Buck finished pumping the gas. He hung the nozzle back up.
Alex asked, “That a pretty decent motel next door? The Starlite?”
“It's the only motel.”
“But I saw a half dozen on the way in.”
“All closed. The Starlite's the only one still going, and she isn't doing so well.”
***
Alex paid for his gas and made the short drive to the Starlite Motel. He parked his car on the cracked, weedy asphalt, unloaded his golf bag and small duffel, and walked to the office. He pulled open the doors, entered into the air-conditioned office, turned—
—and a furry seven-foot beast towered over him, its giant claws outstretched, jaws wide open in a silent roar.
“Jee-sus.” Alex stumbled backward, his hand snaking behind his back to his pistol. He froze, then relaxed, realizing what he was seeing. Glass eyes glared down at him from a moth-eaten elk's head beneath a spreading rack of antlers. But below the neck, the creature was a grizzly bear standing on its hind legs.
“Just a minute,” said a strangely familiar voice from the back room. A moment later, Buck stepped up to the counter, wiping his hands off with the red rag. “Need a room?”
Alex smirked. “Don't know how you guessed. You own this place, too?”
“That's right. Aren't I a lucky guy? Every day I thank my dad for leaving me all of this. Maybe someday I'll get really lucky and it'll all burn to the ground. Along with the rest of this town. And everyone in it.” Buck nodded toward the creature in the corner. “So, I see you met the Prosperity Bearalope.”
“Bearalope, huh?” Alex turned and looked at the strange creature again.
Buck nodded. “That's right. The one and only. It was a tourist thing back in the fifties. You heard of a jackalope? Same thing, sort of. The local taxidermist sewed an elk's head onto a grizzly bear, and the result is this ugly bastard. Used to move a lot of postcards and coffee mugs, back when people actually came to this shithole.”
“Well then, wouldn't it be an elkalope? I mean, bear-elk? Belk?”
“Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it? Now you understand why they went with bearalope.” Buck pulled out a ledger book and made a great show of running his finger down the columns. “Let me just see if we have any vacancies. Looks like we've got . . . all of 'em.”
“Then I guess I'll take the Presidential suite.”
Buck named a figure.
“Shit man, and you wonder why you ain't got no customers.”
The man behind the counter shrugged. “Well, good luck finding another place to stay in town.”
Alex rolled his eyes but paid. “Any place to get a bite to eat around here?”
Buck slapped down a room key on a large wooden keychain with the number 11 engraved on it. “Rudy's is the only restaurant still open.”
“You own Rudy's, too?”
“Nah, Rudy owns Rudy's. Good place, though. The waitress might spit in your food if you get on her bad side, but Rudy makes a heck of a burger. You'll want to go back down the highway about a hundred feet, then turn left onto Main Street, and you'll see Prosperity proper. Rudy's is the first place on the right. It's hard to miss. If you find yourself in the middle of the desert or in a gypsum quarry, you went too far.”
Alex tipped his hat. “Much obliged.” He took the key from the counter and shouldered the golf bag.
Buck nodded toward the bag. “Going to play a few holes while you're in town?”
With a shrug, Alex replied, “You never know.”
Alex walked down the narrow sidewalk that led from the office to the motel rooms, past the empty swimming pool with weeds pushing up between the chipped tiles, down the row of sloppily painted red doors with metal numbers on them. He stopped at number 11.
He opened the door, flicked on the light, and looked over the motel room—a threadbare carpet; a single bed with a thin comforter, stretched tight and turned down; an eighties vintage television sitting on a fiberboard dresser; an ancient air conditioner underneath the window. Alex turned the knob, and the A/C unit rattled to life, blowing chilled air into the stuffy room. He breathed in the subtle, undefinable scent of cheap motel, smiled slightly, and dropped his luggage on the bed.
He went out and locked the door behind him, hanging the Do Not Disturb sign on the doorknob, and set out to find food.
***
“Well gol-damn, would you l
ook at this place.”
Downtown Prosperity was a postcard picture, circa 1955. Main Street branched off from the old highway at a right angle, then shot broad and true through the heart of the little town. The pharmacy and the diner stood like stone lions on the front steps of a courthouse, flanking the entrance to Prosperity. Beyond them, the broad street was lined with shops, big picture windows topped with cloth awnings, and wrought iron lampposts protruding from the sidewalks.
On the left side of the T-intersection was Miller's Pharmacy, a low brick building with a sign in the front window advertising compounded prescriptions, malted milkshakes, sundries, and cosmetics. Through the windows, Alex saw an ice cream counter with steel and vinyl stools, and a black-and-white-checkered floor. A plump old woman with a white-haired perm walked down the pharmacy steps carrying a prescription bag.
Next to the pharmacy were a salon, a small liquor store, and an empty storefront with newspapers taped up in the window below a sign that read mckesson hardware. At the end of the block sat a larger, sand-colored building. Metal letters affixed to the wall, in a bold, institutional, sans-serif font, read perdido county sheriff's headquarters. On the other side of the far intersection, a car pulled away from the post office and disappeared around the corner.
Across the street from the sheriff's headquarters sat a two-story, wooden building with a square facade fronting an A-frame roof, Old West-style. A second story balcony ran the width of the front of the building above the front door but below the faded sign painted on the wooden facade that read annie's saloon. Next to the saloon, facing the liquor store and the salon, was a row of empty storefronts with faded cloth awnings.
Next to the empty stores, across the street from the pharmacy, Rudy's Diner sat like a Buck Rogers spaceship on the launchpad.
Alex breathed deep and paused for a moment to take it all in. Stainless steel glistened in the sun. On the roof, a giant fiberglass statue of a rotund child held up a giant burger. Next to the statue, a stucco tower stood with the word rudy's printed vertically in squared, neon letters.
The corner into which the front door was set had been smoothly rounded off. The awning curved boldly and gracefully around the building, bordered by stainless-steel piping and neon tubes that were dark in the bright sunshine. Two walls of square, translucent, glass bricks on either side of the door were mortared into a gentle curve that matched the roof and the steps.
A hand-painted sign on the window advertised burgers and fries. An unlocked bicycle leaned against the wall by the door. Alex whispered, “Mister McAllister, you done outdone yourself.”
Alex climbed the curved steps to the diner and pulled the stainless-steel door handle. The bell above the door rang, and a wash of cold air passed over him as he entered. He took off his sunglasses and hooked them over the collar of his T-shirt.
The place smelled like coffee and french fries. The dining area inside was L-shaped, with rows of booths lining the windows on two sides, opposite a lunch counter. In front of the counter was a row of red vinyl swivel stools bolted to the floor. Half-open venetian blinds covered the windows. Sunlight filtered down from a row of skylights. There was a jukebox in the corner and pies in a glass case on the counter. Two ceiling fans turned lazily.
One of the booths was occupied by a man in a sweater vest and glasses, and another was occupied by an old woman. Otherwise, the place was empty.
A fat older man with jowls like a bulldog stood behind the counter, holding a paperback book in his meaty hands. When the bell on the door rang he put the book down and raised one finger to his brow in salute. “Hey, fella.” He turned his head and yelled, “Rachael! We got a walk-in!”
“Shit, three in one day?” called a voice from the back room. “Just a sec.”
The waitress appeared from around the corner. She stopped in the kitchen doorway for a moment to appraise the new arrival.
Alex appraised her right back.
She wore a just-barely-long-enough, black T-shirt stretched tight across her chest, leaving a sliver of white skin visible at her waist. Tight jeans hugged tight curves under her waist apron, and she stood with one hand resting on a defiantly-cocked hip. Her winged-out eyeliner would have put Cleopatra to shame. Her bottle-black hair was tied up with a red bandanna. Sleeves of tattoos covered both arms. Her eyes flicked down and back up, and for a moment she tapped her pencil against her cherry red lips.
Abruptly, she smiled. “Howdy, stranger.” She used the pencil to point to the name embroidered in cursive on her shirt, riding high on the upper curve of her left breast. With a look of sardonic amusement, she said, “My name's Rachael. I'll be your server today.”
A grin spread across Alex's face. “Howdy yourself. I'm Alex.”
“So.” Rachael walked across the restaurant, stopping just inches from Alex, and grabbed a menu from the stack by the door. “You hungry?”
Under her frank gaze, Alex couldn't help smiling back. “Darlin', I am starved.”
“Well, come on in, then.” She shot him another glance over her shoulder as she turned on her heel. “Booth or counter?”
He looked around at the two patrons in the diner. “Well, I don't wanna take up a whole booth. You might need it.”
She gave a throaty laugh and flashed him another look, amplified by her eyeliner. “Oh, you're a comedian. Counter it is.”
Alex followed her to the lunch counter, his eyes briefly dipping to take in the view. She set the menu down in front of him as he straddled one of the lunch-counter stools, then she leaned next to him with one elbow. “Can I start you off with anything, Alex?”
He nodded. “Coca-Cola. In a glass. With ice.”
“A man who knows what he wants. I'll have that right out.” Rachael strutted back behind the lunch counter. Alex watched her leave for a moment longer than he needed to.
The old woman sitting by the door stood up. “Thanks, Rudy. I'd better get back before Buddy shows up for his first of the day.”
The big man behind the counter waved. “We'll see you later, Annie.”
The bell on the door rang as the old lady left. The man behind the counter leaned on his meaty hands and turned toward Alex. “So, friend, what brings you to Prosperity?”
Alex looked up from the menu. “Chasin' Elvis.”
The man raised an eyebrow. “What's that, now?”
“Long story. Matter of fact, this restaurant is one reason I'm here. I'm . . . I guess you might say I'm a fan of architecture. This place was designed by a man named Wayne McAllister. Big name in the fifties.”
The man nodded. “Well, that's a first. Really, you came all the way out here for that? I remember that Dad was proud as hell that he got a big name architect to design his new restaurant. He wouldn't shut up about it. At that time, this town was on the way straight up. People thought Prosperity was going to be on the map. Funny how things change, though.”
“I was just hearin' about that from the man at the gas station.”
“He'd know about it as well as me. You might guess from the décor, this place peaked around 1960 or so. Those were good years. Somebody found a new silver vein in the ‘50s, and the standard mine reopened. We had road trippers coming in from the new highway, and the state park was booming. Then, a little bit at a time, everything just fell apart. Now the whole place is about to blow away like a dry leaf.”
“Sounds bleak.”
The big man absent-mindedly polished the counter with a rag. “Pal, you don't know the half of it. I'd leave, but I don't know where the hell I'd go. Besides, without me, everybody still here would starve to death.”
Alex laughed softly. “You're doin' God's work.”
Rachael came back with a glass of Coke on a round tray. Ice cubes rattled pleasantly as she set the drink down and pulled a paper-wrapped straw from her apron. She touched Alex briefly on the arm. “There you are, hon. Let me go give the professor his check, then I can take your order.”
“Sure thing, darlin'.” He turned back to
the big man. “I'm Alex, by the way.”
“I'm Rudy. Rudolph Hauser the Third, at your service.” Alex shook the man's meaty paw. “What do you do for a living, Alex?”
Alex sipped his Coke and glanced out the window. “Pest control.”
Rudy said, “Good line of work. The world never runs out of cockroaches.”
With a nod, Alex responded, “Y'all can say that again.”
Rachael sidled around the corner to the only occupied booth in the restaurant. She set the check down. “How was the salad, Dan?” she asked.
Dan Sinder sighed. “It was adequate, I suppose.”
Rachael smiled bravely. “Adequate. Well, that's what we like to hear. We aim to please.”
“I'm sure.”
“I mean, it can't be that bad,” she said with a laugh, “because you keep coming back.”
“It's not as if there is a surplus of options in this town.” Sinder was gaunt, with high cheekbones, gray, thinning hair, and a mouth like a paper cut. He wore wire-rimmed spectacles, a tucked-in dress shirt, a sweater vest, and brown slacks. He might have been handsome, once. He had a hooked posture and long, delicate fingers.
From behind the counter, Rudy said, “Dan, you know we get our produce order in on Tuesdays and Fridays. If you want a good salad, you shouldn't come in on Thursday afternoon.”
Sinder placed some bills into the check folder and handed it to Rachael. To Rudy, he said, “She asked how the salad was. It wasn't remarkable, nor was it terrible. Am I supposed to lie?”
Rachael came back with his change. “Well, Dan, there's this thing called a meaningless pleasantry. For example, when I say 'have a nice day,' I don't actually mean it. It's just something human beings do. You should try it.”
“Hmm.” Sinder laughed softly but didn't smile. He glared at Rachael. Without a word, he stood up and walked out the door. He climbed on the bicycle outside and rode away.
“Have a nice day!” Rachael called. She picked up his salad bowl. “There's also something called leaving a fucking tip.”
Alex Rains, Vampire Hunter (Book 2): Hell Night Page 3