Saul heard Dutch scream, “Kihl im!” though the words were blurred by her ruined mouth.
He felt Marley push his cold fingers down the front of his jeans. Marley nuzzled his ear, and the stink of curdled milk made Saul gag.
“That mark poisoned your blood, but I’ll enjoy — ”
Saul suddenly sprang backward, slamming Marley into the ATM. They struggled near the coffee station, but Saul couldn’t reach one of the hot pots. His fingers closed around the handle of one yellowed ceramic mug stacked in a pyramid on the counter. Its fellows tumbled noisily to the floor. He slammed the mug into Marley’s side and gut. The guy went down, clutching his abdomen.
Saul glanced at the mug, dusty and cracked, a relic older than him. Black lettering on the side said IOWA, YOU MAKE ME SMILE. He threw the mug at Marley’s crotch and ran.
Before he reached the door, his peripheral vision spotted the mop, its wormy head tangled and dripping, before it struck his chest. He stumbled into a shelf, the metal raking his back, cans and shrink-wrapped goods spilling around him. Dutch shrieked as she slammed the mop against his knees and sent him to the floor.
She stood over him with a slack jaw filled with broken teeth. But no blood; delicate strands of saliva webbed her lips and hung from her chin. She reversed the mop in her hands, so the blunt end hovered over his neck. Saul could see her struggle with her lips to make a smile.
Fresh light played over Dutch. When she raised her head to look out the glass panels, Saul grabbed at her leg, pulling hard. She lost her balance and fell, her head making a sickening smack as it struck the linoleum.
That should take her out, he thought, but she was lashing out, trying to stab at him with the mop. He grabbed the nearest can rolling on the floor — an aerosol, some sort of air freshener — and sprayed her full in the face. She cried out, tried to wipe her eyes as the smell of sweet faux lemons filled the air.
Saul stood. A car had pulled askew of the pumps and its headlights were aimed directly at the convenience store.
He stopped at the counter — without any urge to peer over and see the body — to grab a lighter. The other stunt from the movies he’d always wanted to try was igniting an aerosol spray.
Outside, the rain had slowed to a steady drizzle. He could still smell the gas vapors from the spilled trash drum.
The driver’s side door of the idling car — no, a pickup truck, he saw — opened, flashing Saul the Cotre Ranch “endless trail” logo. Phelps stepped out.
He must have been searching the highway for me, Saul thought. He felt relief at being found. He was more battered and bloody from fending off homicidal siblings than from anything the ranch had thrown at him. And yet beneath that relief was a dismal emptiness at knowing he’d be taken back to the ranch. So much for finding a new life.
“Saul, get in the truck,” Phelps said, then reached across the truck’s seat for something.
Saul stepped into the headlights’ beam. “Two psychopaths are in there.” He held aloft the aerosol. Despite the drizzle, flicking the lighter would probably ignite the very air around him, but he couldn’t let Phelps get hurt because of him.
“I know,” Phelps said.
“Wait. You. you know?”
“Course.” Phelps hefted what could only be a crossbow. “Boys watching the closed circuit told me you did good.” He began walking toward the store.
“But — ”
Phelps carefully pushed open the door. “Shit, looks like I’m cleanup crew tonight.” He spit on the ground and chuckled. “Get into the pickup. And don’t be messing up my radio stations. They’re a bitch to program.”
Saul noticed that Phelps left the keys in the ignition. He told himself to count to a hundred while the man made the fatalities. If he wasn’t back by then.
But he was, with a grin, before Saul reached sixty-eight.
As Phelps smoked a cigarette and drove, Saul had to listen to Patsy Cline walk after midnight and Merle Haggard avoiding mirrors.
“You weren’t supposed to even know about
“Hanukkah.”
“Right. Hanukkah.” Phelps managed not to mangle the word.
“So the other boys at the ranch. ”
“Some know. We’d been luring that pair through the internet for months. The boys were supposed to go out hunting tonight. ’Cept someone messed with the gate.”
“Guess I’m in trouble.”
Phelps didn’t say anything but kept driving. The truck’s cab was bitter cold from the wind.
Phelps braked the truck to a stop in the middle of the road. “Minnesota is a couple miles north. Just follow the road. Truck stop not far over the border.” He pulled out a scuffed leather wallet. “Bounty on two of ’em — let’s say two hundred.” He held out four wrinkled fifty-dollar bills to Saul.
“I don’t understand,” Saul said.
“You’re the one who ran. Thought you wanted out.”
“But — ”
“The boys who know. ” Phelps crushed his cigarette into a crowded ashtray. “Well, they work extra hard ’fore they can go out hunting. What you went through before, that’ll seem like a Hawaiian vacation.”
Saul still had the aerosol can in his lap. He could never look at it the same way anymore. Tonight had transformed it from a cheap, lemon-scented air freshener into an aluminum trophy. And he could feel transformed, too. He didn’t want to step out of the truck and keep walking down a highway. Not after what he’d seen, what he’d done. He looked Phelps in the eyes. He knew the man was ready to pass judgment, depending on what Saul did next.
He fingered the top of the aerosol. “Ever light the spray? I mean, when you’re fighting one of
Phelps slipped the money back into his wallet, back into his slacks. “Never wanted to burn my face off,” he said.
Saul knew he had passed the test. They’d turn around, head back to the ranch. And whatever grueling crap he’d face when he woke would be fine, because this time he’d been the one who chose the ranch, and this time as reward, not some punishment.
Still, he couldn’t resist leaning out the window as Phelps put the truck in gear. His hand was steady as he held the lighter to the can and squeezed. Saul found himself grinning as a tongue of blue-and-yellow flames licked the cold night air.
Gap Year
by CHRISTOPHER BARZAK
When the vampires came to town, there was an assembly in the high school gymnasium. Retta and Lottie sat next to each other on the bleachers, like they did every day in study hall, their hands folded between their pressed- together knees. The three vampires who stood on the stage had something to tell them. “We’re people, too,” said the head vampire, if that’s what you call a vampire who speaks for other vampires. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen. A splash of freckles on his face. Mousy brown fauxhawk. A tight, too-short Pixies concert T-shirt showing off a strip of skin above the waistband of his boxers. He wore jeans with a snakeskin belt hanging loose in the loops. If you saw him in the hallway, you wouldn’t suspect him of being a vampire. Retta and Lottie weren’t sure if they suspected him of being a vampire now, even though he said he was.
“We just want you to know that we’re not all about silk cravats and rural villages that sit at the bottoms of eastern European mountain ranges,” he told the assembled population of freshmen through seniors. “We don’t necessarily kill, although some do, but they aren’t representative of us as a whole.”
“Oh my God,” said Lottie. “I cannot believe they’re doing public outreach. It’s pathetic. I
