I tried to say something cool, wound up stammering something like, “WANNA YOU WANNA WEENIE ME?” The end kind of trailed off in a shrill, choking warble.
“Just be calm. You’re doing fine. Now tell me what you were doing before I made myself known.”
“Who—who the fuck are you?”
“My name is Robert North.”
“Congratulations. Now who are you and what’s this fucking thing you—”
“Please answer my question. Where were you going in such a hurry?”
“Home. Why? What’s it to you? What’s happening to night?”
I reached up and adjusted the rearview mirror to see in the backseat. It was just a man, thin, in his thirties. Brown hair, buggy eyes and a beak-like nose. Looked sort of En glish, but no matching accent. He spoke robotically, with difficulty. It’s the way some deaf people talk, not able to hear their own inflection. He was wearing a white, furry woman’s hat, what looked like a blue Wal-Mart vest with a little plastic toy sheriff’s badge tacked to the breast.
He nodded toward the rear of the vehicle, where the stereo speakers were. “That man, in your, whatever you call it, your communicator. Does he need help?”
“What?”
“He sounds wounded. Does he need your assistance?”
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
“Why do you not respond to my questions directly?”
“That’s just Fred Durst. On the radio. He’s not talking to us.”
“Are you certain? It sounds as if he is crying out while someone is strangling him.”
“I know. That sound is entertainment to many of us. It’s called a ‘song.’ ”
“I know songs. But—I thought they rhymed.”
I looked back again and saw the man was holding my gun by the barrel, studying it with detached curiosity. He had never held a gun before.
I said, “I’m turning off the radio so we can hear each other. Look.” I very gingerly reached out and clicked off the power button. “Okay. I’m driving home. I live there. Can you tell me who you are, and where you’re from? Or even better, who sent you?”
“I’m from right here, so far as you know it. Who sent me means very little right now. Why you are travelling home with such urgency, in these conditions, is of great importance.”
“Did I kill the girl?”
“I do not understand the question. My interest is only in you and in your desperation not to answer my question. I assure you that your own safety depends on your honesty.”
The thing on my chest began pulsing gently, making gulping twitches.
“I’m going to reach out again,” I said, “to make an adjustment to the heat in here. Okay?”
I very slowly and nonthreateningly punched in the cigarette lighter.
“Now,” I said, “I am going home to check something. In my toolshed. The, uh, the little building behind my home where I store things. Okay?”
He stayed silent for several seconds. A quick glance in the rearview showed a very grave expression on a bony face bathed in shadow and flickers of passing streetlights. The look of a man who’s going to have to put his dog to sleep.
“Fascinating.”
“What?”
I glanced down at the lighter. The slug on my chest slowly curled its tail around, coming to rest along my neck and earlobe. It gave a little shiver.
North stared off into the passing night and said, “They harvest insects here, do they not? For their honey? Do the bees know they make the honey for you? Or do they work tirelessly because they think it is their own choice? Have you never noticed that, after hearing a new word for the first time in your life, you’ll hear it again within twenty-four hours? Do you ever wonder why sometimes you’ll see a single shoe lying along the road?”
A single tear rolled down his cheek. It occurred to me that the man was batshit insane.
The lighter clicked. My heart leapt with anticipation and I realized, with disgust, that the slug thing could feel the change. It twitched and fluttered as if it were feeding off the excitement.
I shifted my hands, the left on the wheel, the fingers on my right resting on the knob of the lighter.
North didn’t seem to notice me plotting my escape, but said, “I am at a loss. I have been watching you for some time, but there are great gaps in my knowledge. You know, I observed a man who masturbated until he bled. Did he want to do that? And you, when you were alone you—”
I yanked the lighter free, the coils orange with heat. I slammed on the brakes and cranked the wheel with my left hand. With my right I jammed the lighter onto the lump in my shirt where I guessed the creature’s head would be with a sharp
The slug thing shrieked and thrashed wildly inside my shirt. The truck spun and tilted up on two tires for a sickening moment.
The truck fell back down on four wheels with a thud. The lighter tumbled to the floor, a streak of orange in the darkness. A small yellow flame danced around a hole in my shirt where I had singed it with the lighter.
I grabbed around for the slug thing and for several terrible seconds I felt its teeth brushing against my skin, jaws working, struggling to grab on. I wrestled it free and suddenly I had it tight in my hands, slimy and writhing, slipping under my fingers. It had a little circle of tiny teeth, each curled and needle-sharp, like fishhooks. There was a thin, straw-like appendage emerging from the center, about as long as my finger and whipping around, flecking little droplets of blood.
I took one hand off it and opened the driver’s-side door. I flung the flopping thing out into the snowy middle of the street.
I spun around in my seat and saw Mr. North pawing around the floorboard, the gun nowhere to be seen. I threw a wild punch at his face. North flung himself back in an effort to dodge it and gave me a shot at the gun, laying half under the seat below me.
I threw my torso back there, my feet kicking around at the windshield. In a scramble of elbows and hands I grabbed the pistol and twisted my body around. I jammed the barrel under his chin.
We sat like that for a long moment, both of us breathing puffs of steam as the icy wind poured in the open door. I thought I could hear a soft thumping sound, our slug friend trying to deal with life in a world of ice.
“Okay,” I breathed. “Okay, okay. This thing I’ve got pointed at you, you know what it does?”
He nodded, said, “I believe I have an idea, yes.”
“And have you ever heard the old human saying, ‘I want to shoot you so bad, my dick’s hard’?”
“I have not. But I believe the context makes its meaning clear.”
“Shut up. Don’t move.”
I crawled back into the front seat, keeping the sights on him until I dropped my legs out of the driver’s-side door and stood up into the wind. I looked around the street for the squirming monster. It had crawled all the way to the sidewalk.
I crunched over toward the creature, lifted a boot and stomped on it. I grunted random curses under my breath as I pounded the thing, again and again, hammering with my boot heel. The slug exploded in a spray of brown and red. The red blood, I assumed with disgust, was mine. I kept stomping, little flecks of ice spraying with each impact, until the monster was a wet, twisted stain.
I kicked the shredded remains into a sewer grate nearby, then stomped back toward the truck. Sweat freezing on my face, my nose running freely. My teeth were clenched, my hand squeezed on the gun so tight I could feel the pulse in my palm. From a few feet away I could see that the back door of the truck was open now and when I got there I was not surprised to see that North was gone. I slammed his door. I got in. I drove home.
I SAW JUST one other vehicle while I was out, a snowplow. I passed a cop in a convenience store parking lot, messing with the chains on his tires. He shot me a look as I passed, like I was insane
