The Traveling Vampire Show

I was awfully dizzy by then and my arms were getting tired. I thought maybe I’d better end things soon— maybe by slamming the canine into a wall of the snack stand. So I started working my way in that direction.

Rusty yelled, “Don’t bring it here!”

“Just let it go!” Slim called.

So I did.

Waiting until it was pointed away from the snack stand, I released its tail. The weight suddenly gone, I stumbled sideways, trying to stay on my feet.

I didn’t see the dog at first, but its howl climbed an octave or two.

Then, still staggering, I spotted it. Ears laid back, legs kicking, it flew headfirst, rolling through the air as if being turned on an invisible spit.

Far out across Janks Field, it slammed the ground. Its howl ended with a cry of pain, and the dog vanished in a rising cloud of dust.

Slim’s voice came from behind me. She said, “My God, Dwight.”

And Rusty said, “Jesus H. Christ on a rubber crutch.”

Then, growling like a pissed-off grizzly bear, the dog came racing out of the dust cloud.

Rusty yelled, “Shit!”

Slim yelled, “Run!”

I squealed a wordless outcry of disbelief and panic and sprinted for the shack.

Chapter Six

Leaping, I grabbed the edge of the roof. Rusty and Slim caught me by the wrists and hauled me up so fast I felt weightless. An instant later, the dog slammed against the wall.

I sprawled on the tarpaper, gasping for air, my heart whamming.

While I tried to recover, Slim sat cross-legged beside me and patted my chest and said things like, “Wow,” and “You saved my life,” and “You were a wildman” and so on, all of which made me feel pretty good.

While that went on, Rusty stood near the edge of the roof, leaning over the big wooden BEER—SNACKS— SOUVENIRS sign to keep an eye on the dog. He said, “It’s still down there” and “I don’t think it’s even damaged from all that,” and “How the shit are we gonna get outa here?” And so on.

After a couple of minutes, I sat up and looked at Slim. There were scratches on her face, shoulders, chest, arms and on the backs of her hands. She even had claw marks on the top of her right breast, running down to the edge of her bikini top. Those weren’t bleeding, though. A lot of her scratches hadn’t gone in deeply enough to draw blood—but some had.

“It really got you,” I said.

“At least it didn’t bite me. Thanks to you.”

Looking over his shoulder, Rusty said, “You’ll still have to get rabies shots.” He sounded almost pleased by the idea.

“Screw that,” Slim said.

“You will,” Rusty insisted.

“You want to take a look at my back?” Slim asked me.

I crawled around behind her and winced. Her back, bare to the waist except for the tied strings of her bikini, was dirty and running with blood from her fall on the ground. In at least five places, bits of broken glass were still embedded in her skin.

“Oh, man,” I muttered.

Rusty came around for a look and said, “Good going.”

“I try my best,” said Slim, smiling.

I started picking the pieces of glass out of her.

“You’re gonna need a tetanus shot, too,” Rusty told her.

“No way,” Slim said.

“Besides,” I said, “she had a tetanus shot last year after that moron stabbed her.”

“That’s right,” Slim said.

“And one shot lasts like five or ten years,” I added.

“Couldn’t hurt to get another,” Rusty said. “Just to be on the safe side. And the rabies shots.”

After I pulled the pieces of glass out of Slim’s back, she was still bleeding. “You’d better lie down,” I told her.

She stretched out flat on the roof, turned her head sideways and folded her arms under her face.

Her back looked as if it had been painted bright red. Blood was leaking from ten or twelve slits and gashes. Nowhere, however, was it gushing out.

“Does it hurt much?” I asked.

“I’ve felt better. But I’ve felt a lot worse, too.”