by Lorne Dixon
Straight ahead, three lines of cars, all motionless, stretched to the horizon. Traffic in the opposite direction fared only slightly better. The ghostly voice of a newsman drifted over from a Range Rover in the next lane, professionally detached and snarky, not at all the compassionate voice of Walter Cronkite or Bill Beutel.
Worst traffic jam in the state’s history.
David gripped his stuffed rabbit Copper as he stared out the passenger window, his passive eyes not seeing, his round face too pale. Copper had survived the fire and been pulled from the ruins covered in ash. The tip of his left ear had been blackened and his marble eyes had clouded. But Copper and David had survived.
“Shouldn’t be so long now,” Ross said. He tried to keep an upbeat lilt in his voice, but the gravel and hiss of fifty-odd years of cigarette smoke made him sound like a cartoon. He felt like an imposter, not a real grandfather. He had never taken David or the girls down to the park to feed the ducks at Cressida Point, never taken them for custards at the cowboys-and-Indian-themed ice cream stand in Muellington, or to the movies to see a long cartoon and eat spongy popcorn.
David didn’t respond other than to take a deep breath and release it.
A distant siren’s wail drifted into the car like a wayward fly and buzzed around their heads. It might have been a police car or an ambulance but it was too distorted by the hum of idling engines, songs and voices from car stereos and long blurts of car horns to tell. It might have been a police car or an ambulance, it really might have been, but to Ross it sounded like a fire truck.
David’s face darted towards the windshield and a pang of terror flashed across his face. His fingers dug into Copper’s fur.
“It’s just a car alarm,” Ross lied.
David’s eyes squinted with distrust but he relaxed his grip on the rabbit and leaned back in his seat. He said nothing but began to squirm and fidget. Ross wished they had gotten an earlier start. Maybe they wouldn’t have gotten snared in the traffic jam or at least David might have slept through it. But the morning had started badly. David woke screaming for his mother and Ross had been unable to comfort him. Then they had argued over breakfast—a local diner versus McDonald’s—until an early lunch became a better option.
A flash of motion caught Ross’s attention. A leather and denim scarecrow of a man on a motorcycle was cruising down the highway’s inside track on the other side of the guard rail. He slowed down as the driver of a rusted pick-up truck waved him over. The biker rolled to a stop, idled his bike, and yelled over the rattle of his engine, “Nasty wreck back there. Wind carrying the smoke straight into oncoming traffic. A bloody mess.”
Ross winced at the word bloody and hoped David hadn’t heard. He didn’t want to think what images the word might evoke in David’s head.
A voice inside Ross whispered, You knew.
He didn’t want to hear that voice, didn’t want to think about what it was saying: the same words he’d heard repeating over and over since the fire.
The bike’s roar sounded like the crackle of a million interwoven sparks bursting from a grinding wheel. It broke Ross out of his daydreaming.
David reached out and toggled the lever to the heater, quickly working it back and forth. Frustration flashed across his eyes and for a moment Ross caught of glimpse of how he would look as an old man, in the last days of his life when opening a can of whole kernel corn would become a miserable challenge. He would resemble his grandfather quite a bit.
“It won’t work. David, I told you before, it’s broken.” He tried to keep the irritation out of his voice but the cold, the bike’s sparking engine and the boredom were all conspiring against his performance. “Leave it be. David, leave it—”
The boy toggled the lever one final time, tossed his grandfather an impatient look, and settled back down into his seat with a huff. “It’s cold.”
“Yes, it is.”
Ross pinched his eyes shut. The slow boil of a migraine began to percolate just behind his right eye. His face felt bloated, his throat dry. The blinding light of the midday sun tried to pry into his head through his shut eyes. He hated it, but told himself to relax, to count his heartbeats, to bring down his anxiety, to resist the temptation to snap at the next inane complaint out of David’s mouth, to—
You knew, Ellie, his wife of forty-one years and the first loved one he’d buried, whispered from the darkness inside his head, but you did nothing.
His dry lips curled. I didn’t know. I couldn’t have.
You knew.
Two weeks after Ellie’s funeral, he had found himself in the deli line at the same grocery store they had shopped for thirty years. When his number was called he froze, unable to speak, unable to order a quarter pound of turkey breast rather than a half. He waited there, mouth open, eyes on the floor, until they called the next number. Then he had fled.
But maybe it wasn’t—
No, Ellie insisted, you knew.
A car horn blasted and Ross’s eyes shot open. David, already twisted around in his seat, pointed to the car behind them. “What’s he want, Grandpop?”
“Don’t know, David.” David gasped when he reached for the door handle. “Hey, hey kiddo. I’m just going to see what he wants. No reason to get upset. He could need help.”
Sparks of tension crackled in his chest and his heartbeat quickened. He doubted the man in the blue Honda needed help but he told himself he had to find out. Can’t look the other way and hope things will be okay. Not this time. Bad things happen. Can’t just look the other way.
He opened the door and stepped out. Both knees cracked as he stumbled to the Honda’s window. His legs were bad today, worse after such a long time cramped up in the car.
The driver was a scrawny man in his mid-twenties. He wore a department store suit and chemicals in his hair to keep it slicked back. “Hey, Pops,” he called, “you got any idea where that road goes?”
Ross followed the man’s finger. He pointed to a small dirt road nearly obscured by encroaching tree branches down the highway a quarter of a mile. “Is it even a road? Looks like a hiking trail.”
“Nah, looks like there used to be a road sign.”
The pole still stood, but the name plate was gone. He was right: it was a road. “No, got no idea where it goes. Doesn’t look like anyone else does, either, or else I imagine someone would be taking it.”
The young man’s eyes shot to his watch. “Well, I don’t think I have a choice. I have a job interview and I’m already twenty minutes in the hole. Can’t be worse than waiting for this mess to clear up, right?”
“Right,” Ross said, but didn’t believe it. Waiting was better than lost. He tapped the side of the Honda. “Good luck with that.”
The young man sneered. “Thanks anyway, Pops.”
Ross shook his head, limped back to the station wagon, and tumbled into the driver’s seat. David was crying full-bore now, and Ross could see why. The wind had changed direction and now geysers of black smoke whirled over the highway. The accident at the head of the jam must have been nasty, but he knew that David wasn’t thinking of any car accident. He was thinking of flames spreading across his bedroom walls and his sisters’ screams from the room across the hall. David had told them he tried to get to them but the door was too hot and the smoke made him cough and—
“Hey, hey, hey.” Ross reached out for his grandson but David pulled away and slouched against the passenger door. For a second Ross thought he saw a look of accusation in the boy’s eyes, but then the anguish and a fresh wave of tears washed it away.
You knew.
The blue Honda pulled out of line behind him and crept down the shoulder, squeezing against the guardrail in places to avoid other vehicles parked on an angle. When it reached the dirt road, the Honda pulled in and vanished in a cloud of airborne soil.
They waited. More smoke drifted overhead. David began to sob. Ross leaned his head against the cold driver’s side window. What could he do?
You
could have taken back the toy oven when you saw the recall notice. You saw it.
You knew, Ellie hissed.
If you had, David wouldn’t be crying, he’d be with his parents and his sister. They’d still be alive.
“We’re gonna go. Right now,” Ross said. He started the engine, spun the driver’s wheel, and drove onto the shoulder. “We’ll take a little short cut. Get away from all that smoke and that car alarm.”
David sniffled, wiped his face, and stopped crying.
“We’re gonna be okay, kiddo, Grandpa and you.”
They pulled off the highway onto the dirt road.
David hugged Copper.
Chapter Three
Chev ran until his chest felt ready to explode and his face and hands had gone numb. He stopped, bent over with his hands on his knees, and panted. His breath mushroomed out of his nostrils as tiny typhoons of white vapor. His cold ears pounded with his heartbeat. Out of shape, he wondered how far he would have to push himself to force a heart attack.
He could hear them in the woods on both sides, following him down the empty highway, some running as men, others trotting on all fours. Could it have been his fear playing tricks on his mind? Could his frightened head turn every woodland sound into the gallop of powerful paws?
Again he told himself no. He knew what was real. The beast on his truck’s hood had certainly been real. Rationalizing the situation wouldn’t make it any safer.
On foot he stood little chance if those monsters chose to rush out of the brush and attack him. Maybe he could take one or two, possibly, but the entire pack? No. Chev prayed for a car to flag down. But if God heard his prayers, He must have decided to bet all his chips on the monsters because no headlights appeared on the horizon.
He straightened up and moved his hands to his hips. He hadn’t yet caught his breath, but knew he needed to keep moving. So he walked. His knees crackled with each stride and a sharp burst of pain hit with each footfall. The road bent up ahead, turning out of sight, and the thought occurred to him that the beasts could be waiting on the other side of the turn, ready to ambush him, to drive him to the ground, to tear him apart with those razor–sharp black teeth.
Still, there was no choice, not anymore. He could have locked himself inside the truck and hoped the beasts wouldn’t have broken through the windshield. But even if they hadn’t, the old men could certainly have thrown rocks. At least on the run he wouldn’t find himself cornered. If he had to die, he would succumb after having tried to make his way back home to his family.
He turned the corner. No monsters waited with teeth gnashing and claws slicing.
A quarter of a mile down the new stretch of roadway, he saw lights. He couldn’t make out much, but there was a parking lot and a long, single level building up ahead. Ignoring his exhaustion, Chev ran.
He heard them pick up speed in the woods.
Getting closer, the building shimmied into focus. It was an old Food Cabinet supermarket. Chev hadn’t seen one in twenty years but recognized the store’s logo, a shopping cart carrying an impossibly large pineapple, and the yellow and orange external décor. Faded streamers blew in the wind between lamp posts in the parking lot.
The Food Cabinet’s sign read open six a.m. to one a.m.
His feet left the road and landed on the parking lot’s cracked pavement. He started to laugh as he sprinted towards the store’s entrance. Against typical Vegas odds, he was going to make it.
He stepped onto the rubber mat and the automatic door swung open. Grinning in triumph, he stepped inside and felt a wave of heat against his face. Turning, he saw eyes reflecting moonlight, peeking out from the overgrowth across the road. Perhaps a little of his young man’s spirit hadn’t entirely died—he extended his middle finger as the door closed behind him.
He passed an unmanned courtesy booth and made his way to the only cashier on duty. Standing at the register in checkout line Two, she was a college-aged brunette with a band-aid over her right eyebrow, no doubt to mask a piercing. Two customers stood in her line, an old man and a young boy. They didn’t seem to be buying anything, just standing and talking.
Was he only an old man, or something else?
“—a right by the pond. Guess that may be kinda hard to see at night, but if you drive slow, then I guess, like, it shouldn’t be too hard—” the old man said.
As Chev approached her, he considered what he should say. The truth? And what was that, he asked himself, a story of naked old men and bear-sized wolves that steal cell phones? He knew she would think that story had been co-written by Jim Beam. No. A simple lie. Just something to get him out of there. “Excuse me, Miss?”
“Huh?” she asked, turning away from the old man and the kid. Her name tag read bella.
He coughed into his fist. “There’s been an accident. I mean, I had an accident down the road a bit. I need to call someone for help. The cops, or—”
“What kind of accident?” she asked.
“I hit an animal,” Chev said. “But now my rig won’t start. There’s all kind of electronic safety—I don’t know. Used to be able to fix most problems on the road with a sixteen-piece tool kit. Not anymore.”
The old man smiled. “Well, that’s certainly true.”
Nodding to the old man, he said, “Better days.”
“They were.” The old man extended a hand. “Name’s Ross. This is my grandson, David.”
“Chev.”
They shook. David sunk behind his grandpa’s leg.
“Gotta pay phone out front.” Bella pointed to the door. “Don’t know if it works or not. Haven’t seen anyone use it for years. Everyone has a cell phone now, y’know?”
Chev clenched a fist. “I know.”
She shrugged. “So?”
“Thing is,” Chev said as he glanced towards the doors, “I’m not stepping foot outside this store. There has to be a phone in here that I can use.”
Ross raised both hands. “If I had a mobile phone, I’d let you use it, no questions asked. But I never saw a reason to go out and buy one.”
Bella’s eyes flickered to the doors then narrowed. A suspicious expression passed over her face. “You’ll have to talk with Mr. Aldridge, the manager.”
“Fine, where is he?”
Bella pointed to an office door next to the courtesy booth. Chev thanked her under his breath and took two steps towards the office door. Then he froze.
Three headlights turned in off the highway. When their beams hit the glass, the store’s showcase windows lit into walls of white light. The sound of three fully cranked engines echoed through the store. Chev could feel a vibration shudder through the floor tiles.
The engines died and the headlights flickered out.
His eyes adjusted. Three men in denim and leather dismounted from their motorcycles. A cattle skull adorned each bike between its handlebars. The bikers were muscular men in their early thirties, tattoos peeking out from their sleeves, ponytails riding down their spines. From the expression of their faces, they hadn’t come to buy milk.
Bella ran to Chev. “An accident? That’s what you said—an accident. What did you do? What did you—”
The bikers came to the automatic door. Their leader, a tall, muscular slab of beef with a flat face and a squashed nose, pushed the door open with one hand. The door’s electric motor whined in protest. The other two bikers followed a step behind, hands dangling at their sides.
“Hey there, Bella,” the leader said.
She nodded and stepped away from Chev. “Hey, Marek.”
He pushed past Chev and ran a hand down Bella’s hair then rested it on her shoulder. “You’re looking pretty t’night, like usual.”
“Thanks, Marek,” she squeaked.
The girl trembled. Chev recognized that kind of fright. As a kid, his father made a habit of beating the family dog. The dog trembled like Bella, not because it didn’t know what would happen to it, but because it did.
He snorted. “Too bad tonig
ht’s all full up. Wouldn’t mind taking you into Aldridge’s little closet office over there and laying you out over his desk. See how good you howl.”
She blushed, at least tried to blush, but the look on her face was closer to dread. She turned away and bit her lip.
He turned her face back with a finger. “Now that’s too bad, now, ain’t it?”
She nodded.
“Say it. Say it’s too bad we won’t have time to have a little fun tonight. Say you’d love to spend some time with me. And maybe Jiri and Jozef, too.”
Her face reddened and her eyes squinted nearly closed. Her lips parted and twitched. “I … I’m sorry that … that we …”
Chev dropped a hand on Marek’s shoulder. The other two bikers lunged towards him, but stopped when their leader raised two fingers. They didn’t move in, but they rustled in place, breathing heavy.
“I was just about to get to you, friend,” Marek said. “Just wanted to have a few words with my girlfriend here.”
“Leave her alone.” Chev pulled his hand back. Over Marek’s broad shoulder he saw Ross step fully in front of David, shielding him.
Marek turned and for a moment his face seemed to swirl as if reflected in a funhouse mirror, the ragged biker’s scarred face replaced by a bestial, inhuman maw. He smiled and his face returned to normal. But Chev recognized the black teeth jutting out of that smile. He projected a boisterous yell at the manager’s office door. “Aldridge, get out here, man.”
Nothing; not a sound from behind the office door.
“I can smell you, little man,” Marek said.
Bella clenched her jaw and nodded. “He’s in there.”
“Aldridge, you gonna make us come in there and get you?” He spat out the words “get you” in a vicious syncopated rhythm that suggested he meant tear you to pieces. “Gonna count to three, and I’m gonna start at two-and-three-quarters.”