drinking and smoking Cee all day long. We’re sitting at this bar putting back shots of Wild Turkey, just tearing into each other as was our way. This big dude, think he might have been with the Outlaws or the Pagans, he says, Hey, how much for your wife? I say, you want to buy that shit? He says, Sure I do. How much? A dollar, I tell him. He hands me a dollar and takes hold of Trixie and she screams something at me and that’s the last I saw of her.”
“Well, what happened?” Texas Slim wanted to know. “He kill her?”
Sean pulled off his cigarette. “No, nothing like that. She shows up back at the hotel about three in the morning, all dirty, clothes torn, and I say, Hey babe, how was it? She near beat the shit out of me. Next day, that big biker comes up to me, says, I want that dollar back. I say, That bad, eh? He don’t think it’s funny, says, You ought to have a license to sell poisonous snakes, you asshole.” Sean sighed. “Yeah, that Trixie. She was something. She was doing a nickel at Utah State Penn for possession last I heard of her.”
We all laughed again. But not Janie. She did not like stories like that. Things had changed so much now. You had to stick tight to survive these days, not like the old days where you and the boys went out to the man-cave to swap the salt and talk tit. You had a woman these days, you had to keep her by your side and she had to keep you by her side.
Carl said, “We best be on our way, Nash. I don’t like being out here in the dark.”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s get gone.”
We crossed Island Park, guns in our hands and packs on our backs, keeping an eye on the shadows and the things that might be hiding there. We saw nothing. We got on Jackson Boulevard, went over the bridge and Waterfall Drive, cutting down South Main. We needed a place to sleep for the night. We were all dead tired. Usually, well before sunset, we had a place. But today had been busy.
“Start checking some doors,” I told Texas Slim as we walked. “We gotta lay up somewhere.”
He did so, but door after door after door was locked. We could have blasted our way in, but I didn’t want to make all that racket and draw attention to ourselves. Besides, what good is a door that’s been blown off its hinges? I wanted a place with some security against what was outside, hiding in the dark.
“Too bad none of us can fly a plane,” Sean said. “Lots of planes at the airport. Maybe I should give it a try, Nash.”
“Oh, shut up,” Janie told him.
The full moon above was very bright. Main looked like a glowing ribbon of ether as it stretched away into the distance. Everything was silent and surreal. All those empty buildings and shops crowding each side of the street, the abandoned cars at the curbs. If it hadn’t been for the skeletons in the gutters and that unearthly quiet, you could have fooled yourself that there was still life here. Still people sleeping in beds and little kids dreaming little kid dreams, all charging up for another day in the life.
But it wasn’t that way anymore.
Those buildings were monuments to a way of life that had vanished now. Main Street, Elkhart, was like something kept under glass in a museum: carefully preserved but long dead and gone. As we walked, Carl out front with his rifle looking for trouble, I felt at ease with things. What we had done this night wasn’t something I was proud of, but we were alive, we were breathing. We would live to fight another day and another day after that.
I was wondering where we were going to hole up for the night and where in the hell we were going to get a vehicle come tomorrow. Most were either smashed-up or their batteries were dead, engine parts salvaged. But we needed a ride. We needed one bad. We had to get moving west.
“Open door,” Texas finally called out, standing in front of a tattoo parlor called INKED AND DANGEROUS.
It was good as any.
“C’mon, Carl,” I said, waiting for him as he scanned the streets with the barrel of his AK-47, looking for trouble, always looking for trouble.
We filed inside and I locked the door, pulled down the shade on the window. It was a tight little place, but it had a backdoor leading out into the alley in case we needed to make a quick escape. We rolled out our sleeping bags and the boys had a smoke while I tried to get Janie to act civil.
But after what had happened in the park she wasn’t speaking to me. She had retreated into herself, offended at every conceivable level by what we had done to the woman and what we had offered her up to. But I didn’t much care. All I knew was that it was done. It was over with. We’d made sacrifice and we were safe now. At least until the next cycle of the full moon.
Because that’s when The Shape would come knocking at the door again with an empty belly.
2
It seemed like my head had barely hit the pillow when Carl was shaking me awake. “Nash,” he said. “C’mon, Nash, wake the fuck up. We got activity here.”
“What?” I said.
“I think someone’s out there. In fact, I’m sure of it.”
I pulled myself out of my bag, looked out the window and saw absolutely nothing. Just the empty street, the rusting hulks of vehicles. Some at the curbs, others pulled right up onto the sidewalk. A few had been driven right through the plate glass windows of shops across the street.
“Looks pretty quiet,” I said.
“I think we were followed.”
I was still looking and not seeing anything.
“There was someone or something behind us, dogging us. I know it,” he said. “They’re out there right now.”
Carl’s intuition wasn’t always on target, but usually in situations of danger he was pretty damn perceptive. I watched the streets and though I did not see anything, I had the oddest feeling that as I watched, I was being watched. It made the flesh at the back of my neck creep.
Sean crawled out of his bag, stretched, said, “How the hell am I supposed to sleep with you two jabbering like this?”
“We’re being watched,” Carl said.
“You always think we’re being watched,” Sean told him. “Go lay the fuck down. Put a tampon in and get a few Z’s, for chrissake, you pussy.”
Carl almost hit him with the butt of his AK and it would not have been the first time. I stepped in-between them as I always stepped in-between them. Carl was always fighting with Sean or Texas. He had a short fuse and they knew it. He just couldn’t take a joke. One of those guys that walks around with a target on their backs.
I peered out the window again. I thought for just a second I saw someone dart behind a car. It could have been my imagination. My eyes were still crusty from sleep. The moon above the buildings had moved clear across the sky. I must have been out for hours.
I had just pulled my face from the window when the first shot rang out.
A bullet punched through the glass and I felt it pass by my cheek. Heavy caliber, too, because not only did it punch a neat hole in the window but it shattered it. Another round came through the glass face of the door. Carl brought up his AK and fired a few liberal three-shot bursts into the streets. And that brought the reports of at least three more rifles. The glass was blown out of the door and black bullet holes were punched into the walls behind us. Carl fired another burst and by then, on my hands and knees, I had everyone together. We rolled up our bags, gathered up our packs and made for the rear entrance.
Carl gave another three-round burst to keep our adversaries from making a rush at the building.
“Get going,” Sean told us. “I’ll hold off the Indians and catch up with you.”
I’ll never forget him standing there with his Ruger Mini-14 carbine, bopping and weaving as rounds peppered the tattoo parlor, telling us to get going as he worked the bolt and laid down suppressive fire. And I’ll also never forget that crooked, toothy smile he flashed me right before a bullet caught him in the head and blew his skull into mucilage that splashed against the walls.
Somebody screamed. In fact, two people screamed: Janie in horror and Carl in manic rage. I was too shocked to do anything but stare at Sean folded up on the floor, his legs kicking then going still, the top of his head just…
