Incredible Melting Man-if it weren't for their welfare checks. Only a third of the handout actually went to buy food. The rest went to moonshine and speed and pot and whatever else would give them a few hours of amnesia.
One of his own uncles lived out here, and that made him sick to his stomach. The catch of it was, what really burned his ass, was that the white trash couldn't stop breeding like maggots.
No matter how many rubbers they gave out at the Pickett Health Clinic, no matter how many birth control lectures they gave to those doughy rednecks, they still manufactured an endless stream of yard monkeys. All with the same vacant eyes and slack mouth and growling belly and an inborn craving to get higher than a Chinese kite.
Crosley cruised past the silent, dark trailers, wondering about the tin-boxed lives of the people inside. Probably dreaming about their next handout. Hope none of them come down to fuck up Blossomfest. Maybe they'll hang out here all weekend, swapping out wives and spark plugs.
He didn't see any prowlers. Nothing worth stealing back here anyway. He decided to pop around the corner to the GasNGo and get himself a Snickers bar and a Penthouse. Then he'd park somewhere and finish off the Black Label before the sun came up.
He had almost completed the trailer park loop when he saw movement in the bushes that bordered the lot. A dirt trail led into the woods, and lights from the gas station blinked through the trees. The rednecks probably walked through there to buy their two-dollar wine and disposable diapers. He put the cruiser in 'park' and heaved himself out from behind the wheel.
Crosley walked up the trail, his hand on the revolver that swung from his hip. No need for caution. Subtlety was lost on these bastards. He stomped around in the bushes as if trying to flush a covey of quail. 'Come on out. I know you're in there.'
A rustle of sprung grass and bent twigs answered him. He unsnapped his pistol strap and lifted his revolver.
'D-don't shoot me, Mister Policeman,” came a small, sniffling voice.
One of the yard monkeys. What's he doing out this time of night?
'I won't hurt you, son,' Crosley said in his calm cop voice. 'Just come on out into the light where I can see you.'
A boy, maybe eight or nine years old, stepped from beneath the low branches. Moonlit tears streaked his dirty face. Crosley knelt to the boy, hoping he wouldn't catch lice. 'What's your name, son?'
'Mackey Mull, sir. They call me Little Mack.” The boy sucked what sounded like a half pound of snot back up one nostril.
'Little Mack, huh? Well, what in the world are you doing out here in the middle of the night, Little Mack?'
The boy looked down at his feet. 'You sure you ain't going to shoot me?'
Crosley realized he was still holding the pistol. He smiled and slid it back into its holster. He almost patted the boy on the head but decided against it.
'I wouldn't hurt you for a thousand dollars.' Unless it was tax-free.
'I been hiding,” the boy said. “Since way yesterday.'
'Now, little man, what are you hiding from? ' Crosley hoped it wasn't a child abuse case. Domestic problems were a hell of a lot of paperwork, and the legal system never changed a goddamned thing. For all he knew, this brat deserved a slap across the lips once in a while. Most of them did.
'The bad men. With the shiny green eyes.' The boy sobbed, small shoulders shaking. 'I think they got my mommy.'
'Your mommy? What bad men?'
'The bad men. Like in the scary movies.'
'Look, son. Don't you worry. Mister Policeman will fix everything right up, now.'
'My brother Junior says policemen are pigs. Are you a pig?'
Yep. No person alive could resist the temptation to backhand this particular mucous midget.
'No, son, we're just plain folks working hard to make the town safer for everybody. You live here in the trailer park?'
'Yeah. Over there.' He waved his hand.
'Okay. Just lead me to your trailer, and I'll make things all better.'
'What about the bad men?'
Crosley chuckled. 'I'll take care of the bad men,' he said, but noticed that he was rubbing his stomach. Something the brat had said about green eyes made him think of the Incredible Melting Man.
The chief followed the yard monkey back down the trail. They were almost into the open gap of worn yards and gravel when he heard limbs snapping. He turned just in time to see his uncle, his military clothes torn and stained. The old bastard usually took pride in his appearance, especially when he was wearing the uniform.
“Uncle Paul,” Crosley said. “What you doing out this time of night?”
Uncle Paul took a staggering step forward and lifted his arms. His one eye was shining like a lime lighthouse. Crosley looked into the eye and saw empty carnival nightmares as the wrinkled and slick face pressed toward his own.
“See, it’s one of them, ” the brat shrieked beside him.
Crosley ordered his hand to lift the revolver, but his muscles went AWOL. Uncle Paul’s rancid stench swarmed his senses and snaked into his nostrils. Then their faces pressed together and Crosley tasted bitter sap. The spores hit his tongue, flooded him, broke and burned him. His mind was already turning, already joining, already halfway there.
'See?” Crosley heard the brat squeal, just before he slid into the blissful fog. 'See? I told you there were bad men. Stupid pig.'
Then Crosley was overwhelmed by his uncle's moist slobbering, by the rotten rind of a mouth that kissed him hello and good-bye. As the brat’s footsteps receded into darkness, Crosley entered a different kind of darkness, one that never ended, one he never wanted to end.
Nettie crawled across the patio of the parsonage, her belly cold against the flat tiles. Her arms ached, her ankle was swollen, her knees were rubbed raw, and her head throbbed with bright metal pain. But she was alive.
She might be the last person on earth, but she was alive. She heard the noises from the church as those creatures blew their bubbly praises to the rafters, sang their unintelligible hymns and blasphemed all that was good and holy with the very fact of their existence. If it weren’t for those hellish visions described in the Bible, Nettie would have thought herself insane. A visionary shouldn’t suffer doubt, and this was a sure vision of hell.
She had seen the preacher's wife sliding across the vestry. She had seen the snake-eyed preacher complete his conversion. She had seen the overripe parishioners crossing sacred ground on their trembling stumps of legs like lepers to a healing. She had witnessed and believed.
Nettie raised herself to a sitting position, pulled open the storm door, and tried the knob. Locked. Nettie hoped Sarah was home. It was her only chance. She gripped the doorknob with both hands and hauled herself to her knees. Then she rapped on the glass window.
No one answered.
A light was on in one wing of the house. Maybe it was Sarah's bedroom. Nettie didn't think she could crawl another inch. She banged again, louder. Her ankle throbbed like a crumbling tooth.
She was about to knock again when she saw the long shadows of the ones who stood in the distant church door. Those who had turned. Against nature. Against God. Against the light and toward her.
They shuffled down the church stairs under the quiet stars. The preacher led the way as the creatures crossed the graveyard, his thin twigs of arms upraised in rejoicing. Amanda followed, once again a chastened wife, only now she had the power of a demon. The Painters followed, meek and marshy and jubilant. The unidentifiable dripping stalk that had once been a person brought up the rear, one arm missing.
Nettie pounded louder and began yelling. The preacher was close enough so that she could see his lightbulb head, now lit with a neon green filament. He smiled at her as if she were a lamb that had hopped between the fence poles of the slaughterhouse holding pen. The musk of the others drifted across the dewy night, a stench of sun-split melons and swamp rot.
