supposed ta and fucked-up stuff like that, and I mean I bet if we found it we’se could have us a real rowdy time, some real groaty hobknobbin’ like we’se never had before, don’t’cha think?”
“Aw now, Gut,” Scott dismissed, “I heard them stories too since I was a kid, and it’s just a load of horseflop, and I ain’t seen me five Creekers in my whole life I bet. So quit tryin’ ta spoil my night of razzin’. There ain’t no Creekers, and there shore’s shit ain’t no Creeker whorehouse.”
That idea shore went bust, Gut concluded. He couldn’t even reckon where he was drivin’; he just cruised down one road after the next while Scott-Boy chugged more beer. The moon kept followin’ him, flashin’ at him through the straggly trees like an eye blinkin’. Then:
“Hot-damn,” Scott-Boy leaned forward and whispered. “You see what I see, Gut?”
Gut saw her, all right. Some chick walkin’ along the Old Dunwich just as fast as her legs’d carry her, wearin’ some real ratty clothes, and she never turned as the big truck approached, not hitchhiking but just walking, and it was kind of creepy, her just walkin’ along with that funny colored moon hangin’ over her.
And Scott snickered. “We’se gonna pluck us this one.”
Gut groaned in his mind, that low feeling in his belly getting hot. He pulled the truck up just ahead of her and stopped, and Scott-Boy was out lickety-split. He cracked her a good one upside the head with the brass knucks and just as quick was hauling her into the truck, and then Gut was stepping on it again just like that, like maybe five seconds was all it took to pluck her off the road.
“Oooo-yeah-mama!” Scott-Boy exclaimed. “I just knowed we was gonna find ourselfs some splittail tonight.” He was pushing the barely conscious girl down into the footwell, giving her a few slaps on the head, and he was just laughing away as usual, all riled up now. “Yeah, Gut, let’s git off this road right quick ’cos I gots ta slip into this skinny bitch ‘fore my pecker busts, ya know?”
“Uh, yeah,” Gut nearly moaned. Up a spell came a dirt turn-off they’d used fer razzin’ in the past. Scott-Boy turned on the dome light, saying, “Let’s have us a gander first,” and he was hauling her up between them as Gut parked in the moonlit clearing. The girl was still out of it from the shot with the brass knucks; her head just kind of lolled like she had no neckbone. But they got a good gander as Scott-Boy got to pulling them ratty duds off her. She had a decent body on her, and a good sized set of milkers fer a chick so skinny, but kinda limp, straggly black hair, and—
“Jaysus!” Scott-Boy exclaimed.
Gut saw it, too. This gal, she had some weirdnesses about her, like, first, she didn’t have no bellybutton, and she had six fingers on her left hand and not but three on her right. She was fully hairless on her plot, too. But that weren’t the cause of Scott-Boy’s exclamation. It was her face…
“Jiminy Peter, Gut. You believe this?”
This girl, her face looked kinda lopsided. A kind of smushed nose, and one ear lower than the other, and that dog-dirty black hair hangin’ over a forehead that looked really queer and round. But queerer still were her eyes.
“Gander them eyes,” Scott-Boy whispered.
They was real big, but one was surely bigger than the other and higher on her head, and the eyes too were a real funny reddish color almost like blood. Gut had never in his life seed eyes this color on anyone.
“Gut, this shore is the fucked-upest gal I ever seen,” Scott-Boy observed.
“She’s a inbred.”
“A what?”
“A inbred, Scott-Boy. Like what I was talkin’ ’bout before. This here’s a Creeker.”
Scott-Boy’s face became a study in fascination. “You know, I never seen me one up close like this. How they get theirselfs so fucked up?”
“Kromerzomes,” Gut answered. “My daddy told me alls about it once. We all gots these things in us called kromerzomes and genes—”
“You means like Levi’s?”
“No, Scott-Boy, I’m talkin’ ’bout some other kinda gene, and these things are real fragile-like. And what happens is, see, these dirt-poor families of hillfolk livin’ way up the boonies, they get to doin’ the bop with everyone, fathers knockin’ up their daughters like it was nothin’, and brothers gettin’ together with their sisters, and mothers gettin’ pregged up by their sons over and over for a long time. And what happens is the genes and kromerzornes get messed up, and the kids come out all wrong like this here gal. And they calls ’em Creekers.”
“Creekers,” Scott murmured, gazing at the girl. “Ain’t this a kick?”
The girl began to rouse, making strange noises that sounded like “allup, allup, allup-harup.” And those big red eyes of hers seemed to be looking up without seeing much of anything, and Gut, in his undeniable erudition, explained, “And most Creekers are real slow in the head on account of their brain’s all fucked up, too. Can’t barely talk, most of them, and those that can just mumble like they’se got their yaps full of backer. It’s ’cos they’re Creekers is why they’re so shit-stupid.”
Then the girl’s twisted mouth began to work, and she blinked those big red eyes and jabbered, “Skeet-inner, come no-hurt.”
“What’s that, girlie?” Scott mockingly asked. He guffawed and slapped her in the face. “What’choo sayin’?”
“Skeet-inner,” she said.
“Yeah, she’s stupider than dogshit, all right,” Scott-Boy determined, grinning in the dome light. He began to take his pants down. “Got a big cooze on her too, don’t she? Sheee-it, I’m gonna blow me a dandy of a nut up them there works, I am. ‘Fact I’ll blow me several, feisty as my dog’s been of late.”
Gut felt even shittier now. He figured this Creeker gal had enough problems, but he didn’t dare raise the suggestion that they let her go. Scott-Boy’s intent was plain as barn paint, and once he got his dog up, there was no gettin’ it down. Hell, Gut had even seen him do it with some sheep up on Miller’s pasture a couple times they couldn’t find no gals to razz. “A nut’s a nut, hail,” he’d said and then got to it. Gut felt sorry for the sheep.
And Gut surely felt sorry for this gal right now. Scott pushed her on her back, not even needing to wank a little to get his dog hard. The gal just lay there on the bench seat, blinking her big lopsided red eyes every now and again, and then Scott-Boy pushed her legs apart. “Gut, how’s ’bout waitin’ outside on account there ain’t room fer the three of us, huh? I wants ta fuck with her some and fire me a coupla nuts up this bald pussy of hers. Then you can take a turn if ya want, ‘fore we kill her.”
“Uh, yeah,” Gut obliged, and he shore didn’t have no trouble obliging. He could razz with the best of ’em, but he didn’t want no part of this. Just weren’t natural to be doin’ it with a Creeker. So he moseyed around the clearing, finished his beer, and chucked the can. He could hear Scott whooping it up fierce in the pickup. Sheee-it, he thought morosely. He knew Scott-Boy real well, and knew how his head worked, and he figured that the girl’s deformities added a lot of extra spark to Scott’s razz.
Groaty hobknobbin, he mused. Jaysus…
He looked around the grove, up at the moon, up at the sky. He didn’t want to think about what was going on in the truck, but it was a spot hard not to. Scott kept the dome light on, and Gut couldn’t help but catch a few ganders. He could see the Creeker gal’s funny feet sticking up, then he could see her head hangin’ out the window as Scott-Boy turned her over and gave it to her in the behind. Then she started pukin’, and Scott-Boy was just laughing away and slapping her around and all in the truck. “Got’s ta get rid of this dog-dirty hair so’s we can see yer purdy face, jabberpuss,” he was saying, and then he started cutting her dirty coal-black hair off with his buck, right close to the scalp and throwing it all around and laughing it up real good, and this poor Creeker gal looked a sight when he was done, just tufts of scrap sticking up on her big, cockeyed head.
Gut sat down on a stump to wait. Hurry it up, Scott-Boy, he thought. We got a run to make later. These dust dealers they drove for, they wouldn’t take too kindly to he and Scott bein’ late, but ‘acorse that was really just an excuse, bein’ late fer the run. He wanted to get out of here was all. The low, sicklike feelin’ in his breadbasket was still there, not just from what Scott was doin’ to this poor Creeker gal, but from a bit of everything. The whole night just had a bad feel to it.
“Ah-no-save-me!” he thought he heard the girl shriek from the cab. “Ona-prey-bee!”
Who knew what the gal was tryin’ to say. Hell, she probably didn’t know herself, so et up she was with the messed up kromerzomes. Gut guessed it must’ve been some scientist fella named Kromer who discovered ’em. These kromerzomes, see, was so deller-kit, if families hobknobbed together long enough over generations there never weren’t no babies born right. No, none at all. ‘Least, that’s what his daddy’d told him.
