Savage Nights

by W. D. Gagliani

  He took a last look at his car, almost crying to see the rain pelting the interior. Then he set off into the woods, heading approximately due southwest, where he estimated he could find a tow truck, a mechanic, a phone.

  Something.

  Soon he was surrounded by thick undergrowth and tightly-packed pine trunks. Both made progress slow and draining. Jimmy Blackthorn was a city Indian, more accustomed to fancy bars and high-class restaurants. Any woodcraft he'd learned as a boy had long ago dissipated. And he'd never missed it.

  Darkness settled on him, the only exception provided by the lightning, which cracked the sky overhead. Though he couldn't see the sky – the pines were too thick. Thunder followed each flash, loud booming gunshot crashes that took his breath away.

  The storm seemed to have settled overhead by now.

  But Jimmy Blackthorn was completely turned around. He realized that if he had any hopes of finding his way back to the highway it was going to be on the dirt road. But which way was the road?

  Now and again a drop of rain penetrated the trees' deep cover and caught him in the face, but so far the storm was wimpier than he had expected. Lots of noise and flash, little substance.

  He tried to determine the way he'd come, but all the pine trunks looked the same. Behind them there was only black. He turned 360 degrees. It all looks the same.

  How could he get so lost in five minutes?

  Jimmy was pragmatic. First, he tried retracing his recent steps. Five minutes later, he might as well have been in the same spot. He tried a tilt to his left. Same result.

  Sweat now poured down his back, so he stripped off his leather jacket.

  He was going to get some people fired, big time!

  He had to be a stone's throw from the site, yet he seemed hopelessly lost.

  Something rustled in the undergrowth to his right.

  Jesus, now what?

  Jimmy Blackthorn had never been afraid of anything. But for the first time since leaving his car he wondered if he shouldn't have stayed until after the storm.

  The rustling came closer, became louder.

  Jimmy turned his back on the sounds and started to run.

  The undergrowth reached out like clawing hands to grab his ankles and trip him.

  He ran, and the rustling ran with him.

  He stopped, and the rustling stopped.

  Then he heard the same sounds on his left.

  Christ, what-?

  He turned right and crashed through the brush. Whatever it was, it kept pace with him, behind him now.

  Wait, now there was rustling and…

  Panting. Was that his breathing, or someone else's?

  Blind panic blanketed his mind.

  The lightning and thunder seemed to be moving away, but whatever was in the woods with him was infinitely more frightening.

  Rustling and panting came together behind him, and he launched himself through the whipping branches in the opposite direction, desperate to put distance between himself and ... and whatever that was.

  Suddenly he heard more rustling to his left and he corrected his course toward the right, still lost but determined to outrun whatever toyed with him.

  He barely felt the deep scratches that lined his face and arms, smearing blood down his shirtfront. His jacket was gone, lost somewhere behind him. Where they were. He didn't care.

  Jesus, he prayed for the first time since he'd been a kid in the rez orphanage, Please Jesus just get me out of here and back to the car.

  He crashed through a thick screen of bushes, tripped on an uprooted pine sapling, and found himself facedown on the dirt road, grasping handfuls of red mud.

  He heard bodies hurtling through the brush behind him.

  His fancy shoes slipping in the mud, he hurtled down the

  road, barely aware of the rain and the receding thunder.

  Howling came from within the woods, where dark shapes were pacing him from the side. Something crashed onto the road, and he heard the scrabbling paws of some kind of beast-

  He screamed, no longer owned by his outsized pride.

  Something snagged his right ankle. He went flying through the air and face-first into the mud. Then the pain began.

  All he could feel was the agony, not knowing that his ankle was broken and his tendons torn through by a mouthful of long fangs in a snout that was now grasping thigh meat.

  Ripping thigh meat.

  Jimmy Blackthorn screamed as the muscular gray wolf that had hold of him shook him like a rag doll.

  Two more dark shapes burst out of the woods on both sides of him. They lunged, landing on his thrashing body. Jimmy's voice turned into a gurgle as one of the wolves went for his throat, and the other sank its teeth into his stomach.

  Jimmy Blackthorn's mewling was replaced by the sound of the wolves.

  Feeding.

  ***

  At the Back of the Blue Bus

  by

  David Benton & W.D. Gagliani

  From the collection

  Mysteries & Mayhem

  Also published at deadlineszine.com, Issue 3

  A note found on the side of I-80:

  The Lizard King spoke and we listened. He told us of the snake, and of the highway, and of the west. He told us about the beautiful insane children. About the ancient lake and the gold mine. He told us about the blue bus. The Lizard King spoke and we listened. And we did as we were told.

  ***

  There's a feeling we get when it's almost game time.

  It's hard to describe, but it slips over you like a mantle of gelatin that's both warm and cool at the same time, slippery yet scratchy. It makes you shiver with anticipation.

  I checked my watch: 10:40 PM.

  Twenty minutes to game time.

  Then I slid back in my seat and tried to get comfortable. It was comfortable enough – in fact, I could have easily dozed off if not for that gelatin curtain. That, and the adrenaline surging through my veins.

  Game time.

  Gazing through the oily window I could see little of the blasé Nebraska landscape. Just empty plains draped in night. But my dark reflection hovered, trapped somewhere in the glass. I sneered at myself. You handsome devil.

  The Greyhound had rolled out of the Omaha station at ten. There were thirteen of us on board – eleven passengers, the driver, and I.

  I shivered at the portents of the number.

  The bus wasn't expected in Ogallala until almost dawn.

  My nerves were frayed and on fire and my heart made my chest ache. Suffocating anticipation of what was to come.

  I pulled a small notebook out of my jacket pocket and jotted down jumbled thoughts. Free association. What had come and gone, and what was yet to be. A little something to help me stay focused these last few minutes.

  When I was done, I tore the note from its spiral binding, slid my window open just a crack, and let the piece of paper be pulled from my fingers by the rushing wind. I took a deep breath, letting my anxiety go into the night with the note.

  Then I watched the handsome devil in the glass breathe until he became me.

  ***

  The games had started when I was eight. That was the year a drunk driver left my parents strewn, broken, on a lonely highway. Even then, my future was being predicted. I was moved out to live with my aunt and uncle in the middle of Fuckville, Iowa. There I met my competitor, my cousin Frankie.

  ***

  I studied the other occupants.

  The driver, of course – I could see him reflected in the bulbous convex mirror in the front of the bus.

  Then about a third of the way back, on the left side of the aisle, a man in his mid-forties slept with his head resting on a little grey-and-blue pillow. Bland, a businessman.

  Across the aisle, three rows back, a woman and her young son. She was mid-thirties, dumpy. The boy maybe ten. Sound asleep. Nighty-night.

  Two rows behind them, a young couple, their heads resting cutely together. Difficult, but
eminently doable.

  Across from the lovers, a middle-aged woman reading a book. Besides me and the driver, she was the only other one who seemed awake.

  Two rows further back, an old woman, head bobbing like one of those drinking bird thingies.

  Three rows behind her, a woman with a car seat next to her and probably some sort of kid in the car seat.

  On the other side of the aisle from them, an elderly gentleman in a suit and tie right out of some black and white movie. One of those set in the South.

  Three more rows back on the left side, another older man, this one looking like Charles Manson. Maybe he got paroled this time.

  Oh yeah, and one row farther back, on the right side of the back of the bus, me.

  I checked my watch again. Five minutes.

  ***

  Frankie and I hit it off right away, probably because I'd been so newly orphaned by that scum driver who had swerved into their lane and wiped out the older part of my family, leaving me, the younger part, to struggle forever.

  Anyway, I needed someone to cling to, or whatever. The shrinks all guessed at that part.

  Thick as thieves, isn't that what they say? Or used to say? You don't hear that much anymore.

  Cousins more like brothers who were also best friends. That was Frankie and me.

  Frankie introduced me to lots of music, but it was The Doors where something clicked for us both. Something we could not name, but that itched under our skin and made our veins sing.

  And that's when our games had started as well. An Olympics of sorts, each of us always striving to out-do the other, shit like who could run the fastest, who could catch the most frogs at the pond, who could shoot the most squirrels, elementary stuff.

  We were a competitive pair, Frankie and I. This competition intensified as time went on. We'd get older and it was who could drive the fastest, who could get the most tit with the girls, who could drink the most, eat the most, which of us was better in any and every way.

  And the night we found those college kids out camping in the woods… I still get the shivers thinking about it, so delicious, so right. It was destiny, man. But we were so young and so fucking stupid, it was a miracle we never got suspected. We even helped search for the bodies – that was a high.

  It was destiny, man.

  ***

  Forty seconds to start. The Beretta 9mm tucked in my shoulder holster was for The End. The Finale. It meant forfeiture otherwise. I checked the mirror in the front of the bus. The driver was completely oblivious to everything but the road, man.

  I rose from my seat and crept to the other side of the aisle, pulling the knife from my pocket as I moved, and I slipped behind the sleeping man, the one seated closest to me, and watched the last few second elapse on my watch.

  Game time, man.

  I glanced up again. No one aware on this dark road. I looked at the man, puzzling it out, humming in my head, humming the first words: This is the end, beautiful friend.

  Think, man, the clock is ticking.

  He was leaning up against the greasy window, an arm curled beneath his head, and in-between, a tiny Greyhound pillow, his swollen head barely resting on its corner.

  In a swift stroke, still humming in my head, I grabbed the pillow with my left hand and jammed it over his mouth and nose, simultaneously burying the knife blade in the right side of his neck and quickly sawing through flesh and bone and gristle to the left side, almost taking his head halfway off in one motion. Difficulty factor high.

  His dead body spasmed and his right hand gripped my sleeve as he bled out.

  Beautiful friend, I hummed.

  I looked up. The minor commotion hadn't been noticed. No one looked back.

  I had to beat the clock.

  I left him slumped against the window. Then I slipped out of the row, knife in my right hand, pillow in the other, creeping forward until I reached the row behind the woman and the kid.

  I wanted to take a different approach this time. Less struggling.

  The Lizard King spoke…

  Covering her mouth with the blood-soaked pillow, I thrust the knife through her right eye, twisting it until only half the ribbed grip protruded from her head. I jiggled it a little back and forth to make sure. Perfect. And quiet.

  …and we listened.

  I slunk back down into the aisle and removed the child's head with a quick stroke of the sharp blade and placed it in its mother's lap.

  Ah, the artistry. Too bad it didn't count. Only time did.

  Silent, oh so silent, I slid behind the elderly gentleman-

  He told us of the snake…

  -and dispatched him as I had the woman.

  Sitting for a moment's respite, I wiped the grue from my hands and knife. It was bloody and slippery and I couldn't afford to drop it in mid-play. I glanced up. Oh, they were oblivious. Checked the watch: four minutes and fifty-six seconds elapsed.

  As I rested and cleaned up, the highway took a slight decline. The blood from contestant number one slowly coursed down the aisle. Galvanizing! I had to reach the next woman before the blood reached her row, or – worse – made it all the way down to the reading woman.

  Call it crunch-time.

  I crossed the aisle in a crouch, entered the row behind the old woman-

  …and of the King's highway…

  -and finished her quickly.

  I took the icepick from my other pocket. Time for a change. Looking up to make sure no one watched, I moved up two rows, behind the reader woman.

  …and of the west.

  Maybe my shadow crossed over her book, or maybe she just felt my presence – either way she glanced up and smiled at me politely as I entered the row of seats.

  The Lizard King told us to ride the snake. And we were. We did as we were told.

  I was humming. Thrusting the icepick through her open eye with such vigor that it knocked her from the seat and sent her sprawling to the bloody floor with a dull thud.

  Glance at the mirror. The driver had spotted me standing. I obscured my blood-splattered hand from his view and pretended I was arranging myself more comfortably in the sticky seat, clearing my throat so he could hear but not too loudly. Then I hunkered down in the seat, watching him through slitted eyes, stroking the Beretta under my jacket. But along that path lay forfeiture.

  He had night driving on his mind, his hands on the wheel, his soul so weary I could feel it all those seats away.

  Relief, and half-time here already.

  The clock still ticked.

  ***

  In college I began to yearn for the thrill of competition with Frankie. But I was not an athlete, and I was certainly no scholar. So I began clearing the campus of feral and stray animals, furry rabbits, 'coons, cats. A hunting crossbow in the dead of night, stealth was the key to my training. And when I tired of that, I would take a bus into the city, always a different line, cleansing it of the homeless with a sawed-off length of pipe and a trusty knife.

  ***

  The driver shifted gears as we started grinding up a small hill, and I smiled knowing the blood river's course would stop and be reversed.

  Destiny, man.

  Another glance at the driver and a quick look at the remaining contestants, and I slunk from my row to the row just ahead of me, where the woman's body lay half-slumped in a heap, almost as if she were sitting on the floor. I took the aisle seat, my feet resting on her legs. Though her eye was now just an oozing socket, I could see no trace of the icepick handle. I scanned the floor. Nothing. I dug my finger into the wet socket. There, now I could feel the wooden handle. In the intensity of the moment I had pushed the pick too hard and the handle had always been a bit small. Maneuvering thumb and index finger into the gore, I retrieved my weapon and cleaned it on her clothing.

  I peered over the seats. The driver sleepily watched the road. Now it was double-points. The young lovers were seated beside me, still immersed in blissfully sated erotic slumber, their hands under the blank
et maybe fondling genitalia. Two of them resting, slotted together.

  Difficulty factor high, times two.

  Tick tock tick tock.

  Deep breath. Almost there.

  Both hands full, I half-rose from my seat and stepped across the aisle and back, watchful ever watchful. I slid behind the dreaming couple, leaned over the seat right above their smiling heads and, while still half-standing, in one quick move drove the knife through his right eye and the icepick into her left.

  …about the beautiful insane children.

  Jerking, they both died with the force of impact, sending their last moments along the blades and into my hands.

  Double play.

  It worked so well that I retrieved both tools and did a repeat performance on the woman and boy two rows up, humming.

  About the ancient lake…

  Humming "The End"…

  …and the gold mine.

  Checking my watch. On time but ticking away.

  I wiped both tools clean and set them on the seat next to me. I had time for a choice now, but it would have to be quick.

  ***

  A few years later, after college, I finally heard from Frankie again. When I answered the phone, familiar music was playing. I knew who it was. I knew what he would say. I knew what we would do, even if not the how. But I knew, and I'd known all along.

  Even since that scumbag had smashed the hell out of my parents' car, I'd had a bad attitude about the roads, the highways, the veins of the nation. I couldn't bear to think of all the people in the veins that needed cleansing. It was an impossible job, but Frankie had the right idea. He'd been thinking about it, too, for years. We resurrected our competition, but now it would mean something. Now it would be for a higher purpose.