Fiends

    ‘What?’

    ‘I’ve gotta go to the bathroom.’

    ‘Shit.You gotta go now?'

    ‘I can’t help it.’

    ‘Shit,’ he said again. Then he said, ‘Okay, so I guess we gotta get up. We’re cuffed together, case you didn’t notice.’

    ‘I noticed.’

    Slowly, awkwardly, they both stood up in the darkness. Willy got behind Tina and steered her to the table. There, he turned on the lantern. ‘Okay, now we go outside.’

    ‘Together?’

    ‘If you think I’m gonna take off the cuffs at this hour, you’re outa your fucking mind. Let’s go.’

    As they walked in tandem toward the door, Willy saw their reflection in the window. It was the brand new window that he’d installed just before taking off to get Marty. ‘Hold it,’ he said, and grabbed her shoulders. ‘Get a load of the lovebirds. Almost as good as a mirror,’ he said.

    ‘Can we go?' Tina asked.

    ‘When I say so.’

    In the reflection, he watched his hands vanish behind her shoulders. They reappeared under her arms, then covered her breasts. Her breasts felt hot and slippery. He watched himself squeeze them, watched his fingers pinch her stiff nipples.

    She squirmed and made odd little noises in her throat, but didn’t protest.

    He’d grown hard. He rubbed himself against her back.

    In the reflection, he saw one of his hands glide down her belly. It continued downward and went too low to be seen in the window.

    He felt her moist curls.

    Then his fingertips spread her and slid in.

    He saw her smile in the glass.

    ‘Feels good, huh?’ he asked.

    ‘This does,' Tina said.

    The portrait shattered. Jagged shards exploded into the night outside. Others dropped from above. They plunged down like broken slabs of ice, stabbing and slicing her outstretched arm.

    Willy jerked her away from the broken window.

    ‘You bitch!’ he yelled as they both stumbled backward, cuffed at the ankles. ‘You stupid bitch! You busted my fuckin’ window!’

    When they fell, Tina landed on top of him. She squirmed and thrashed. Her back and buttocks were hot and slippery. Willy liked how they felt, sliding against his skin.

    He didn’t know that she was clutching a spike of broken glass until she started to use it on him.

44

    After what seemed like more than an hour of slow driving through the woods, Marty rumbled down a slope and spotted a rock, pale in the moonlight, resting in the strip between the ruts.

    She jammed on the brakes.

    Not quick enough.

    The rock scraped and thundered against the car’s undercarriage.

    When the noise stopped, she wiped the sweat out of her eyes. She eased her foot onto the gas pedal. The car started slowly forward.

    Then she saw it.

    Ten feet ahead, shining in a stray slant of moonlight, was the rear window of another car.

    Willy’s car. The one he’d taken after killing the two men on the roadside last night.

    Marty hit the brakes and turned off the engine. She opened her door, glad she’d taken care of the ceiling light.

    She climbed out and dragged the shotgun after her. Propping its stock on the ground, she crouched behind her open door. She cocked both hammers.

    Looking over the top of the door, she could only see the back of Willy’s car. She gazed at its trunk. Beneath the dark curving metal, Dan lay dead.

    Unless Willy’d moved him.

    Dan.

    She turned her eyes away from the trunk.

    To each side of Willy’s car, she could see woods. But not much else, not from her crouched position behind the door. She didn’t want to stand up. She liked it fine behind the solid, protective door. But there was no choice.

    Slowly, she stood up straight.

    She gazed into the darkness, half expecting a gunshot to crack the silence.

    No, she thought. He won’t shoot me.

    He had shot at her before, but only to stop her from escaping. This time, she wasn’t trying to escape; she was coming to him. He would want her alive.

    Hefting the shotgun, she rushed, crouching, to the front of his car. There, she knelt down by the tire. After taking a moment to catch her breath, she raised her head and looked up the road.

    The shack, less than fifty yards away, was probably no bigger than her bedroom at home. The walls looked like pale, weathered wood. From where she crouched, she could see a door and a window. The window was lit by a dim, hazy glow. As if a flashlight might be on inside the shack.

    She shivered and felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck.

    Is he up? she wondered. At this hour?

    Up or not, this is it.

    ‘Here I come, Willy,’ she whispered. ‘Ready or not.’

    And she was up and running, shotgun heavy in her hands, pine needles crunching under her shoes, running, fingertip sliding through the trigger guard, running, stopping at the shack’s wall, thrusting the barrels in through the broken window…

45

    Willy, standing naked only a few feet away, grinned at her. He was bloody from head to toe. His arms were high as if he might be hoping to surrender.

    Before he had a chance to say anything - before he had a chance to dive for cover - Marty fired.

    With a harsh roar, the shotgun spat flame and jumped in her hands and slammed back against her shoulder.

    The blast caught Willy in the middle of the chest. It hit him like a hard wind, lifting him off his feet, hurling him backward.

    But he didn’t go down.

    In the light of a battery lantern on the nearby table, Marty saw him, still grinning, start to glide back toward her.

    A deathless thing, still up and coming.

    She glimpsed shiny, broken rib bones in the pulpy clutter of his chest.

    She let out a scream that scorched her throat.

    And she thought, Go for the head!