It had to be. Otherwise God would have killed her years ago, right?
So Lane crawled back into the secret closet.
“Lane!”
Where the hell was she?
Hardie dropped to his hands and knees. Visibility was getting bad on the bottom floor. Had she already succumbed to the smoke? No, if it had hit her, it would have hit him, too. Hardie checked under the bed—nothing. He scurried over to the opposite corner, and all at once he realized where she’d gone, damnit.
Hardie charged into the secret closet just as the smoke began pouring into the bottom floor in earnest, gathering up at the low ceiling and working its way down. He could hear the sirens now, too, but he didn’t think that would do them much good when they were sucking in noxious fumes in a matter of seconds. Smoke was going to fill the room in under a minute. They had to get out of here.
Or he could just lie down and die.
Because that’s what you did before, isn’t it, Charlie? You thought you were so big and bad, pushing yourself up off the ground, sneaking out the back way, then storming your way to the garage and firing up the car and smashing through your own doors and hauling ass all the way out to Nate’s place, bleeding all over your upholstery. But that’s okay. Because you thought you were some kind of hero. And look how that turned out. Now, go ahead. Lie down and die. Nobody expects anything more from you. This is what you do best.
Hardie told the little voice inside his head to go fuck itself, and he reached out into the darkness of the closet.
“Lane, goddamnit!”
Hardie’s fingers brushed against her. She moved away, yelling at him to get out, to save himself, they didn’t want him, they wanted her. Hardie ignored her and managed to wrap a hand around her forearm and pulled forward. She yanked her arm backward, screaming at him to leave her alone, it was over, save himself. Her arm slipped out of his hands.
And then everything started to collapse around them.
INTERLUDE WITH MILDLY FAMOUS KILLERS
THE PSYCHOPATHS came out of the desert, looking for some breakfast.
First diner they found was in Barstow. Not a chain, which was good. Chains sucked. They liked homegrown joints. The girl gestured to a car, eyebrows raised, but the young man shook his head. Eggs first, get a car later. The young man said he could really go for some scrambled eggs with hot sauce, some jalapeno peppers maybe. The girl shook her head, patting her stomach. The young man laughed, replied that he had a cast-iron stomach. She rolled her eyes. He smirked at her, then put a hand on her shoulder.
“You ready for this, Jane?”
Jane nodded.
The young man, who called himself Phil, slid his hand down her chest until it was directly over her tit. He squeezed it gently, as if checking the firmness of supermarket produce.
“For good luck,” Phil said.
Jane pursed her lips and blew him a silent kiss.
Inside the diner, the air-conditioning was cool on their skin. Neither Phil nor Jane sweated much, but it was god-awful hot outside. The place was almost deserted. They’d missed the breakfast rush, if such a thing existed out here. Phil looked around quickly, saw that the place didn’t have quite the setup they needed.
“Let’s keep going.”
Jane looked around, then nodded in agreement.
A few joints later, Phil found an ideal spot: a gas station mini-mart with notions. While it couldn’t quite call itself a diner, or even a lunch counter, it had a little breakfast nook with some pale white disks that claimed to be made from eggs, English muffins, some fruit and cereal. There was a flat-screen TV mounted up in the corner playing cable news. Most important, it was still an out-of-the-way gas station. Enough customers to make this interesting; not enough to worry about being overwhelmed. A doughy-looking married couple in their forties. A bored-looking teenager with an eyebrow piercing. A female trucker with tattoos.
Phil and Jane entered, and Jane made a beeline for the breakfast nook and examined the faux eggs. Phil lingered by the door. He smirked at the counter guy and then reached behind to flip the lock before pulling a gun out of his jacket pocket. Jane, near the breakfast nook, had one to match. Everyone in the mini-mart froze in place, not quite believing what they were seeing.
Phil pointed the muzzle at the counter guy.
“You mind putting on
“Wh-what?”
“You’ve got the TV remote back there, don’t you? I’d like you to put on
“It’s not… I don’t think it’s on now.”
Phil kept speaking as if he didn’t hear the man’s response.
“I love the reenactments. They make me laugh, because they’re creepy and cheesy at the same time. You almost feel the danger, you can almost picture yourself there, at the other end of the gun or the knife or whatever, am I right or what?… and then the cheesiness sets in, and you realize you don’t have to be scared at all.”
He glanced over at Jane, who nodded once.
Now he was back, waving a gun in their faces. “But it’s a far cry from the real thing. As you’re all about to find out.”
Next came the part psychotic killer Philip Kindred loved best—the arranging, the stripping. He ordered the middle-aged wife and the trucker to strip down to their underwear, and then the doughy husband to take off his pants but leave his shirt on. Phil told him that his sister didn’t want to see his flabby man-tits, it would just make her upset. The teenage girl with the piercings was forced to pick up a box cutter and bungee-style cords from the small hardware section, and then to put a paper bag over her head. She was fine right up until the paper bag part, and started freaking out, but then Phil shoved his gun into the side of the wife’s chest and threatened to blow her breasts off. Jane was already working on the paper bag, cutting out a little eyehole. She handed it to the pierced girl, who was crying when she slipped it over her head. Jane had clearly done a nice job, for when the bag was on, its edges stopped at her shoulders, and you could see one of the teenage girl’s eyes peeking out through the hole.
Phil, meanwhile, unpackaged the box cutter, quickly loaded a blade, and then looked up at everyone.
“Okay, who’s ready for some fun and games?”
Jane nodded. There was a happy, toothy grin on her tiny face.
—Taylor Negron,
