Deadgirl

had been accosted, hit on the head, and made to suffer merely a tremendous headache and an embarrassing cop-ride home. Only a fraction of me remembered the taste of gun smoke. And even less of that fraction recalled in perfect clarity the creeping cold of massive fatal blood loss.

“People don’t go…here for a bump on the head, Lucy,” Morgan said, and turned to Puck. “Right?”

Puck looked over his shoulder, and even in profile, looked grave. He shook his head.

“Thank you,” I said with a saccharin sweet smile. Puck turned away.

“Lucy. What happened to you?”

I took a breath.

Something let out an earth-shattering CLANG. The convertible jolted and rocked and Puck slammed both of his loafers down on the Falcon’s brake. We slid and fish-tailed, and Puck swung the Falcon’s wheel around in a desperate attempt to keep us under control. Gravel sprayed, metal twisted, and everyone in the car, save Puck, let out identical screams of terror.

Puck wrestled with the old Ford, trying to bring it down. He managed the feat, and when the Falcon crept to a—final—stop, I looked behind us. The debris in the road wasn’t hard to decipher.

The engine fell out of our car.

Zack turned and looked down the long road behind us. He seemed to be making mental calculations. After a few dozen heartbeats, he spoke.

“The engine fell out of the car,” he said.

I closed my eyes and let my head slide down into my lap. Zack put a hand on my back when he saw me shaking. He removed it when he heard my first guffaws of laughter. I didn’t blame him.

The hills had crept up around us as we drove, and now that we were stopped, I couldn’t see the countryside on either side. Large swells of grey earth put the road in a narrow valley—perfect for an ambush, was my first thought.

Zack and Puck spent little less than a minute coming to the conclusion that no amount of spit, elbow grease, or can-do attitude would put the Falcon back together again.

When their inspection was finished, we grabbed our stuff, and Puck knocked one frail, gnarled fist into the trunk. The trunk yawned open with a haunted-house creak.

There wasn’t much there—a few dusty sport coats and what looked like a well-traveled red tool box. Puck handed out the coats—I took a gray wool blazer, Morgan a black pinstripe, and Zack a deep red jacket that looked like something a used car-salesman might be buried in. Then he popped open the tool box and handed Zack a half- rusted tire-iron and Morgan a dull orange monkey wrench. Zack and Morgan exchanged looks and swapped weapons.

“What do I get?” I asked.

Puck smirked and waved his hand as if to say don’t worry about it.

“Figures,” Zack murmured. “I get a wrench and Lucy gets The Force.”

Morgan grinned and tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Will these even help?”

Puck gave her that maybe,-baby hand gesture I loved so dearly.

Morgan laughed at that and set the long black tire-iron on her shoulder. It gave her a jaunty, slightly bad ass look that I immediately envied.

“I pull it off though, don’t I?” Morgan asked. I didn’t think the line of questioning stopped by our car troubles was over—but I think she had decided to postpone it for a less dangerous time. Thank God for killer extra- dimensional monsters, eh?

“Hell yes,” I said, and buttoned up my gray coat. “Shall we?”

Morgan and Zack nodded. I glanced at Puck, who was already re-wrapping his battered red scarf.

“Where-to?”

Puck twisted his lips with one hand, then pointed down the road.

“Okay,” I said, then sighed. “How far?”

He shook his head. Not far then. All right.

“Are we in danger?”

Puck nodded.

“Mortal?” Zack asked.

Puck nodded.

“Seriously though, do I pull off the bad-ass crowbar thing or what?” Morgan asked.

Puck nodded, turned, and stalked off down the center of the road, examining the rusting hulks of cars as he passed. We all trudged after him.

“It’s a tire iron,” Zack said. “But, yes, well done.”

Our road-trip atmosphere didn’t last. Another mile down the road, the noises began.

Chapter Fourteen

Midnight Train

The sound of a rock sliding down a hill. Nothing much else, really.

We turned to examine the sound, only to see a tiny pebble skipping lazily down the side of a grey swell of dirt. I watched everyone’s hackles rise, their fists tighten. Everyone knew. No one joked. Or talked.

The sounds echoed around us, shuffling, snorting, feet breaking into frantic runs, and then stopping. None of us felt the need to communicate the truth—something tailed us, and it made no effort to hide its presence. Puck turned back down the road and began walking.

Zack turned around as we walked, shuffling backwards, his eyes on the road behind us. I touched his shoulder, but other than a barely noticeable tightening of his lips, he didn’t react.

The noises grew louder, shuffling, scraping. Puck bent forward, and began jogging. So did we. Zack stayed behind us—no doubt using Puck and himself to shield us helpless girls in the middle. The thought bugged me, but the chivalry was damn cute.

We shuffled past the rusted wrecks of a hundred cars, dodging around them, sliding over the naturally occurring blockades. I made a point not to look in the cars—while fairly certain there was nothing to be found, my brain kept conjuring the image of a hideously grinning bleached skull staring at me, its skinless fingers still clutching the steering wheel. I’d probably cribbed the image from some bad horror movie, but that knowledge didn’t soothe the nervous ache in my belly whenever we ran too close to a car window.

A deep ragged moan rose up over the sound of our feet hammering pavement. I couldn’t help myself—still jogging, I glanced over my shoulder toward the source of the sound. The hills hugged the battered highway, their dark forms barely perceivable from the roiling clouds in the endless grey sky. As my eyes pierced the gloom, trying to make some sense of the spine-scraping, hollow moan, I saw it. Low, slithering. A human-shape at the top of the hill, crawling on its belly, its elbows stuck out at angles as its palms pulled it forward across the dirt. It moved in sharp jerking motions, its head snapping up toward the sky, then back toward the ground. Long, dirt rags hung from its thin frame, cutting wide swaths in the dirt behind it.

Then, it looked at me. Two greenish-gold glints flashed in the deep hollow pits of its sunken eyes. Its jaw stretched beyond human boundaries, scraping the dirt beneath it. Its neck twisted, staring up at the sky again, and it moaned. The noise, filled with sorrow, rife with hunger, made my skin crawl.

The thing began sliding down the hill on its stomach, dragging the tattered remains of its legs behind it.

When I turned and sprinted, everyone joined me without a word.

The moans began to rise—a chorus of mournful howling. Puck shifted, angled for—it looked like a freeway off ramp, and we were almost on top of it. In another minute, we were there, sprinting off the highway at full speed. Morgan and Zack were sucking greedy mouthfuls of air. I felt tired, certainly, but Zack and Morgan’s faces were bright red, and the air they dragged in didn’t seem to sustain them.

In no way, on no world, was that normal. Morgan was an athlete in incredibly annoying shape, and Zack was Mr. Physical Activity. I should have been passed out on the ground miles before either of them felt winded.