“Dead,” Cynthia said, and put a hand on Steve’s shoulder as he opened his door. “Don’t bother. I can tell from here.”
“We still need a place to hide the truck. If there’s room in the garage, I’ll open the door.
You drive in.” There was no need to ask if she could do it; he hadn’t forgotten the spiffy way she’d handled the truck out on Highway 50.
“Okay. But do it fast.”
“Believe me,” he said. He started to get out, then hesi-tated. “You are all right, aren’t you.”
She smiled. It clearly took some effort, but it was a working smile, all the same. “For the time being. You.”
“Smokin.”
He got out, slammed the door behind him, and hurried across the tarmac to the gas station’s office door. He was amazed at how much sand had accumulated already. It was as if the west wind were intent on burying the town. Judging from what he had seen of it so far, that wasn’t such a bad idea.
There was a tumbleweed caught in the recessed doorway, its skeletal branches rattling.
Steve booted it and it flew away into the night. He turned, saw that Cyn-thia was now behind the wheel of the truck, and gave her a little salute. She held her fists up in front of her, her face serious and intent, then popped the thumbs. Mission Con-trol, we are A-OK.
Steve grinned, nodded, and went inside. God, she could be funny. He didn’t know if she knew it or not, but she could be.
The guy in the office chair needed a spot of burying. Inside the shadow thrown by the bill of his cap, his face was purple, the skin stretched and shiny. It had been sten-cilled with maybe two dozen black marks. Not snakebites, and too small even to be scorpion stings—There was a skin magazine on the desk. Steve could read the title-Lesbo Sweethearts-upside down. Now something crawled over the edge of the desk and across the naked women on the cover. It was followed by two friends. The three of them reached the edge of the desk and stopped there in a neat line, like soldiers at parade rest.
Three more came out from under the desk and scurried across the dirty linoleum floor toward him. Steve took a step backward, set himself, then brought a workboot down, hard. He got two of the three. The other zigged to the right and raced off toward what was probably the bathroom. When Steve looked back at the desk, he saw there were now eight fellows lined up along the edge, like movie Indians on a ridge.
They were brown recluse spiders, also known as fiddle—back spiders, because the shape on their backs looked vaguely like a country fiddle. Steve had seen plenty in Texas, had even been stung by one while rooting in his Aunt Betty’s woodpile as a boy. Over in Arnette, that had been, and it had hurt like a bastard. Like an ant-bite, only hot. Now he understood why the dead man smelled so spoiled in spite of the dry climate. Aunt Betty had insisted on disinfecting the bite with alcohol immediately, telling him that if you ignored a fiddleback’s bite, the flesh 2 around it was apt to start rotting away. It was something in their spit. And if enough of them were to attack a person all at once…
Another pair of fiddlebacks appeared, these two crawling out of the dark crease at the center of the gas—jockey’s strokebook. They joined their pals. Ten, now. Looking at him.
He knew they were. Another one crawled out of the pump-jockey’s hair, journeyed down his fore-head and nose, over his puffed lips, across his cheek It was probably on its way to the convention at the edge of the desk, but Steve didn’t wait to see. He headed for the garage, turning up his collar as he went. For all he knew the goddam garage could be full of them. Recluse spiders liked dark places.
So be quick. Right.
There was a light-switch to the left of the door. He turned it. Half a dozen dirty fluorescents buzzed to life above the garage area. There were actually two bays, he saw.
In one was a pickup which had been raised on over—sized tires and customized into an all-terrain vehicle—silky blue metal-flake paint, THE DESERT ROVER written in red on the driver’s side of the cab. The other bay would do for the Ryder truck, though, if he moved a pile of tires and the recapping machine.
He waved to Cynthia, not knowing if she could actually see him or not, and crossed to the tires. He was bending over them when a rat leaped out of the dark hole in the 2 center of the stack and sank its teeth into his shirt. Steve cried out in surprise and revulsion and hit himself in the chest with his right fist, breaking its back. The rat began to wriggle and pedal its back legs in the air, squealing through its clenched teeth, trying to bite him.
“Ah, fuck!” Steve scream. “Ah, fuck, you fuck, let go, you little fuck!”
Not so little, though-it was almost the size of a full—grown cat. Steve leaned forward, bowing so his shirt would bell out (he did this without thinking, any more than he was aware he was screaming and cursing), then grabbed the rat’s hairless tail and yanked.
There was a harsh ripping sound as his shirt tore open, and then the rat was doubling over on the lumpy knuckles of its broken spine, trying to bite his hand.
Steve swung it by its tail like a lunatic Tom Sawyer, then let it fly. It zoomed across the garage, a ratsteroid, and smacked into the wall beyond THE DESERT ROVER. It lay still with its clawed feet sticking up. Steve stood watching it, making sure it wasn’t going to get up and come at him again. He was shuddering all over, and the noise that came out of his mouth made him sound cold—Brr—rrrr—ruhhh.
There was a long, tool-littered table to the right of the door. He snatched up a tire iron, holding it by the pry-bar end, and kicked over the stack of tires. They rolled like tiddlywinks. Two more rats, smaller ones, ran out, but they wanted no part of him; they sprinted, squeaking, toward the shadowy nether regions of the garage.
He couldn’t stand the sick ratblood heat against his skin another second. He tore his shirt the rest of the way open and then pulled it off. He did it one-handed. There was no way he was going to drop the tire iron. You’ll take my tire iron when you pry it from my cold dead fingers, he thought, and laughed. He was still shuddering. He exam-ined his chest carefully, obsessively, for any break in the skin. There was none. “Lucky,” he muttered to himself as he pulled the recapper over to the wall and then hurried to the garage door.
“Lucky, goddam lucky, fucking goddam rat-in-the-box.”
He pushed the button by the door and it began trundling up. He stepped to one side, giving Cynthia room, looking everywhere for rats and spiders and God knew what other nasty surprises. Next to the worktable was a gray me-chanic’s coverall hanging from a nail, and as Cynthia drove the Ryder truck into the garage, engine roaring and lights glaring, Steve began to beat this coverall with the tire iron, working from the legs up like a woman beating a rug, watching to see what might run out of the legs or armholes.
Cynthia killed the truck’s engine and slid down from the driver’s seat. “Whatcha doin.
Why’d you take your shirt off. You’ll catch your death of cold, the tempera ture’s already started to-”
“Rats.” He had reached the top of the coverall without spooking any wildlife; now he started working his way back down again. Better safe than sorry. He kept hearing the sound the rat’s spine had made when it broke, kept feeling the rat’s tail in his fist. Hot, it had been. Hot.
“Rats.” She. looked around, eyes darting.
“And spiders. The spiders are what got the guy in th He was suddenly alone, Cynthia out the open garage door and on the tarmac, standing in the wind and blowing sand with her arms wrapped around her thin shoulders “Spiders, ouug, I hate spiders! Worse’n snakes!” She sounded pissed, as if the spiders were his fault. “Get out of there!”
He decided the coverall was safe. He pulled it off the hook, started to toss the tire iron away, then changed his mind. Holding the coverall draped over one arm, he pushed the button beside the door and then went over to Cynthia. She was right, it was getting cold.