my way.”
Marcy shifted in her seat and turned slightly to the right. The bum’s aggressiveness stirred an old memory. That night in Overton Park. The homeless guy. The bottle. The first time she’d taken a life. Her fists clenched at the edges of the seat.
“Say, you bitches look kinda familiar.” The bum scratched at a cheek with long nails turned brown with infection. “Yeah.” He waved in the general direction of the convenience store. “Over there at the paper boxes, last week I think it was.” He looked at Marcy and squinted. “I seen you staring out at me. You the one killed all those kids. Maybe I oughta go to the cops, huh?”
The atmosphere in the van turned frigid. Marcy’s heart raced as a paralyzing sense of panic began to set in. This was it, then. The end of the road. But it wasn’t right. Their journey wasn’t over. Not even close. Anger rose inside her.
The old guy sneered again and said, “Or maybe I’ll keep my mouth shut if that one-” He nodded at Dream. “She gives my pecker a good suck and I’ll keep quiet. Come on, bitch. Whatcha say?”
Dream surged past Marcy, seized the bum by the front of his black sweatshirt, lifted him off his feet, and pulled him inside the van. He yelped and flailed a little until Dream slammed the top of his head against the closed door on her side. The man went limp and Dream cradled him in her arms like a child. Her eyes pulsed with cold energy as she looked at Marcy. “Close the door.”
Marcy swallowed a lump in her throat and nodded, then shut the door.
And then she watched in horrified fascination as Dream closed her hands around the unconscious man’s neck and began to twist.
A man in a powder blue 1970s Plymouth set his paper coffee mug in the plastic cup holder he’d purchased at a truck stop the previous night. The cup holder was clipped inside the ash tray and dipped precariously as it accepted the mug’s weight. He hated the old jalopy, but the people in charge said it was better for tailing people than something new and flashy. The man disagreed. He thought the old piece of shit stuck out like a sore, infected thumb, but what did he know, he was just a goon with a gun.
A creepy three-fingered kid named Dean sat in the passenger seat. He kept playing with his favorite knife, running the edge of the blade over the fabric of his jeans, up and down his inner thigh, over and over. The kid was a world-class geek, but he was stone psycho and a merciless killer.
“What do you reckon the odds are we just got ol’ Ducky killed?”
The corners of the kid’s mouth lifted slightly. It had been his idea to send the old bum over to check things out. Ostensibly, the plan had been for “Ducky,” as he called himself, to report back to them with his findings, but that looked to be out the window. “He’s dead. I can feel it.”
The man nodded and removed a pack of smokes from his shirt pocket. He tapped a Winston out and wedged it in a corner of his mouth. “I reckon you’re right, boy. So what do you think? Seems pretty certain these are the ones the Mistress wants.”
The boy licked his dry lips. “Yeah.”
The van’s tail lights came on and the van began to glide out toward the street just as the man was applying a lighter flame to his cigarette. “Oh, shit.”
He flipped the lighter shut and tossed it onto the dashboard. Then he twisted the key in the ignition and listened to the engine groan. He twisted it again and got a rattle. He looked up and saw the van cross the intersection and pick up speed.
“Fuck!”
The kid was looking at him now. The big knife was pointed vaguely in his direction. “It better start.”
The man spoke around the cigarette:“No shit.”
He was trying hard not to sound afraid, but inside he was coming apart. He couldn’t afford to blow this. Not when they were so close. He knew the kid was just looking for an excuse to gut him and resume the chase on his own. So he sent out a silent prayer and twisted the key again.
The engine sputtered, caught, and roared to life.
He let out a big breath and grinned at the kid. “Have faith, kid. They ain’t gettin’ away.”
He gunned the engine and the car lurched forward.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The night was cold, the chill cutting easily through her sweater and the shirt beneath. Allyson scooted closer to the crackling campfire and rubbed her hands together. The warmth from the fire helped, but all in all she’d rather be back inside, huddled beneath a blanket with Chad’s naked body spooned against her back. But Camp Whiskey’s inhabitants had warmed to her somewhat in the aftermath of her close call in the woods. This was the first time she’d been invited to hang out at one of these little gatherings of what she still thought of as the “inner circle,” and she was determined to make the best of the rare social outing. She wanted them to see that she was a good person, a friendly and warm person, and that none of them had anything to fear from her.
Hell, she just wanted to fit in.
Someone on the opposite side of the campfire strummed an acoustic guitar and the low babble of conversation abruptly ceased. The man with the guitar was sitting cross-legged and was wearing a heavy denim-and-wool coat. Jim was stretched out on the ground next to him, but now he sat up and withdrew a harmonica from a pocket of his brown shirt. Firelight glinted on the polished silver surface of the instrument as Jim brought it to his mouth and began to blow. The guitar player intensified his strumming and the two soon found a bluesy rhythm that made Allyson bob her head as she listened. The jam went on for a few minutes. Then Jim lowered the harmonica and began to sing.
A shiver went up her spine at the sound of his voice. Chad returned from his trip to the outhouse and sat next to her, draping an arm around her shoulders. She snuggled closer and laid her head on his shoulder.
Jim paused in his singing to blow a few more bluesy notes on the harmonica. Then the old singer surged to his feet and belted out the song’s chorus with a passion that was exhilarating to see:
Jim’s whole body was moving. Or at least that’s the way it looked to Allyson from the other side of the campfire. He was doing a kind of Ray Charles headroll while the rest of his body rocked to the beat the guitarist was now thumping out on the body of his guitar. Jim looked like a man possessed as that beat intensified, his facial features twisting and twitching, his hands held out before him in a kind of supplication. Allyson watched the performance with mounting awe. There was an undeniable electricity in the air. And no wonder. The man was a legend for good reason.
The beat slowed but grew heavier, the other guy slapping the guitar’s body with the flat of his palms as Jim resumed singing:
Jim abruptly raised a clenched fist high in the air and struck a rigid pose. The guitar player ceased his thumping, shifted the guitar in his lap, and began picking out a subdued, haunting melody, a series of wistful notes that felt like a cold breeze rolling across an open plain.
Jim slowly lowered his fist and finished the song in an equally subdued manner:
The last word was spoken rather than sung. Jim lowered his head and held his hands clasped before him as the guy with the guitar plucked a few final notes, the last of which seemed to hang suspended in the air for a long, achingly lovely moment. Then it was gone and there was just the sound of the campfire and the ambient noises of the wilderness at night.
Allyson released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
A young woman to her left said, “That was incredible. What was that?”
Chad craned his head to look past Allyson. “That was ‘Pay The Devil,’ an old blues standard.”
Jim was still standing on the other side of the fire. He put the harmonica away and tapped a cigarette from a pack. “Man’s correct. Blind Cat Jones’s version from the 1930s is probably the best known.” He lit the cigarette and rolled it into a corner of his mouth. “Used to have it on an old 78.” He smiled around the cigarette and blew out a puff of smoke. “Long gone now, like most things from my past.”
Allyson surprised herself by speaking up. “I’ve heard that.” She met Jim’s gaze across the campfire and felt goose bumps form on her flesh as the corners of his mouth lifted in a small smile. “Years ago I saw a PBS documentary about delta blues. Blind Cat’s version was beautiful, but yours was just amazing.”
Jim exhaled more smoke. “My humble thanks to you, Allyson. And now, if you good people don’t mind, I’ll be retiring for the evening.”
He flipped the cigarette butt into the fire and began to move back in the direction of the cabins. A pair of machine-gun-toting men in camos fell in behind him and trailed him down the slope. Some of the others seated around the fire gathered their things and began to make their exits as well. Allyson stayed where she was,
