yanking the gun from his hand.
“Looks like you just went from assault to homicide, boy.”
“Sheriff, you have to listen. John has my fiance. He and his brothers have her someplace.”
The Sheriff didn’t seem to be paying attention. He got on one knee next to John, and closed the man’s staring eyes.
“Styptic won’t fix this one, hoss.” He blew out a breath. “Look at all that blood.”
“Sheriff... listen to me!”
The Sheriff’s eyes centered on Felix. Felix saw no mercy there.
“No, you listen to me. You’re going to get into my car and not speak one more peep, or I’m going to shoot out both your knees. You got that, boy?”
Felix nodded.
The Sheriff manhandled Felix to his feet, and roughly pulled him out the front door. The squad car was there, and there were several motel guests with their doors open.
“Everyone back inside,” the Sheriff ordered. “The situation has been taken care of.”
The Sheriff opened the rear door of his car and shoved Felix into the back seat, next to Cam. Cam’s nose was bleeding freely, and his face was the epitome of sullen. He had his hands behind his back; apparently handcuffed like Felix.
“Asshole snuck up on me. Probably gonna take me back to the nuthouse. You find out where they’re keeping Maria?”
Felix gave his head one quick, brief shake. “John’s dead.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard to find out where he lives.”
“What does it matter, Cam? We’re fucked.”
The car bounced on its shocks as the Sheriff climbed in. He adjusted his rear-view mirror, looked Felix square in the eyes, and started the car.
When he pulled out onto the road, Felix was confused. He whispered to Cam, “This isn’t the way to the police station.”
“What are you two hens cluckin’ about?” the Sheriff demanded.
Felix slunk back in his seat. “Town. It’s the other direction.”
“I ain’t takin’ you to town.” The Sheriff grinned, showing his crooked brown teeth, and Felix felt his mouth go dry. “I got other plans for you boys.”
# # #
The machine whirs and clicks, spins and pumps. The IV drains blood out of Maria’s right arm, passing it through the siphoning mechanism, and pumping into George. He also has an IV sucking blood out of him, feeding it back into Maria’s left arm.
A trade. Blood in, blood out.
This has been done to Maria dozens of times, and it never fails to revolt her. Exchanging blood with these monsters—she thinks of them as monsters rather than human beings—is almost worse than when they climb on top of her. But the revulsion goes beyond the awareness that their diseased blood is in her body. Their blood actually causes her to feel sick.
These freaks are ill. Seriously ill. They bleed from the slightest injury, and the bleeding doesn’t stop on its own. If they don’t get a transfusion every few weeks, they die.
Maria isn’t sure why she’s still alive. Apparently whatever disease they have isn’t fatal to her. Perhaps she’s immune. Perhaps it can’t be passed on. Perhaps her body cleans their dirty blood, like some sort of human dialysis machine. However it works, Maria knows that she, and other captives like her, are keeping these mistakes of nature alive.
The process takes a few hours, and it’s nearly done. Afterward, the monsters line up, eager for a chance to impregnate her. Maria has tried to tell Eleanor that she can’t have children, that her ovaries don’t work, but that hasn’t stalled their efforts. Eleanor endlessly prattles on about the presidential blood line, about having heirs, and she has some grotesque, grandiose delusions about her legacy. So convinced of her own importance, Eleanor often lies down alongside Maria, and has sex with her own monstrous children and grandchildren in some twisted attempt to produce more monsters.
Though not deformed, Eleanor is the biggest monster of all.
Maria looks around. The freaks are huddled together, grunting at one another. They don’t talk much. Some are mentally retarded, from either inbreeding or birth defects or both, and unable to converse. They’re missing limbs, or have too many, or their appendages are under-developed or in the wrong place. Some have heads that are too large, some too small. Many have harelips. Few of them have hair, and they’re all sickly pale and smell sour.
“All done,” Eleanor says. She’s lifting her dress up over her head. “Let’s line up, children. It’s time to make babies.”
George pulls the transfusion needles from his arms, quickly sealing his wounds with a white powder. He turns to Maria and says, “Me first.”
Maria forces down the gorge rising in her throat; vomiting while wearing a ball gag could cause her to choke to death.
George presses the cattle prod to her stomach, then unstraps her feet and hands.
She closes her eyes and thinks of Felix. She imagines him bursting in right now, killing all of the monsters, and taking her away from here.
Will he still want me, after all I’ve been through?
Of course he will.
It’s been a year since she’s seen him. Felt his touch. Heard his voice. A long, agonizing, nightmarish year.
George frees her hands, then paws at her pants.
She imagines being with Felix. They’re sitting on a porch, drinking lemonade, holding hands. The sun is out. The breeze smells like cut grass.
And since it’s a fantasy, she also imagines the child they can’t have. A toddler, roaming the lawn, chasing a butterfly, or a dog.
She can even imagine the dog barking.
Maria hears it again, and opens her eyes.
“elpDog! There’s a dog!”
Maria watches as Calvin bursts into the room. He’s the one with the unibrow and the flipper hands, one of which is being nipped at by a German Shepherd. Maria is overjoyed to see the animal. She’s even more elated when the dog snarls and barks at Eleanor and her monstrous brood, forcing them to back away.
The freaks are terrified. And they should be. A single bite could kill them. And this dog is big and looks eager to bite.
George, his broad face a mask of fear, pokes at the animal with the cattle prod. The dog takes a quick zap in the muzzle, then darts away. Its lips curl back, exposing long, sharp teeth, and it attacks in a frenzy, biting George’s hand five or six times in the blink of an eye.
George screams, dropping the prod. The new blood he’s just received bursts out of his hand in all directions, like a 4th of July firework. He turns, running for Eleanor, dropping to his knees.
“The styptic, Ma! The styptic!”
The dog lunges again, biting at the back of George’s thigh, clamping down tight and shaking its head back and forth.
The freaks are in a panic, a wall of misshapen bodies climbing all over each other in an effort to get away. They’re flooding out the exit. Some of them are being trampled. Eleanor looks at George, then at Maria, radiating hate.
“Get the girl!” she yells at her brood.
