“Oh, not really,” sighed Justin, lying back. “It’s just so good to have you here. I can still barely believe it.”
“Eh,” Teresa said, rolling over to face him, “that Zero’s House giggy weren’t for me. Too many rules an’ doop. An’ beside, how you gonna do yer Mission wit’out me?”
Justin sat up and smiled at her. “That’s very noble of you. Very altruistic.”
“Uh huh, you say so,” she said. “Whatever that mean. But I gotta tellya, Case, an’ maybe you don’ want me like that, but I still gotta tellya, I din’t leave Zero’s an’ come all this way for no Old Man or no Mission. Naw, I did that cause o’ one thing—you. Track me?”
Justin almost broke out crying. “I don’t know what to say,” he managed, his voice tight. “Except that… I love you, Teresa.”
She looked up at him and smiled strangely. “Is that what this is? I heard all ‘bout love and that gloop, but…” she paused and seemed to think. Then she smiled at him again and nodded. “You know what, Case? I love you, too! Ha! Ain’t that the juiciest?”
Laughing, happier than he had any right to be, Justin fell back and, for the delightful present at least, lost himself in her arms.
Once they’d worn themselves out again, they lay in the gathering darkness. Justin wasn’t thinking of anything in particular, but for some reason a question floated up in his mind and he turned to Teresa.
“I’ve always meant to ask you something,” he said softly, “if it’s not too personal…”
She looked over at him. “Yeh? What?”
“Why did you leave the group you were with, back when we met? What did you call them?”
“Bloodclaws,” said Teresa evenly. “An’ as fer why I left ‘em? Well, they was reasons, but mostly, ‘member the leader greep we had, tall an’ skinny with a mohawk?”
“Yes, what was his name… Sharp, wasn’t it?”
“At’s right,” she said. “Well, ol’ Sharpie, he was real skeeked on me. Said I was gonna be his One an’ Only. His baby-momma, hey? An’ I din’t want that, no how. So? I left. Simple.”
Justin smiled and nodded. “I think I understand. And, truth be told, I’m very glad that you did! But now, I think we’d best get back. Besides, I’m hungry!”
“OK, Case,” she said easily, rising and reaching for her clothes. “Let’s go see if they any more o’ them Twinkles cakes!”
She meant Twinkies, of course, a newly-found favorite, but he didn’t bother to correct her. Trying to control the dopey grin on his face, he led the way back to their home for the night.
Chapter Forty-Five
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The Hunter had never been tortured before. He’d been beaten up, kicked and punched and smacked with pool cues and baseball bats; he’d been knifed four times and carried the marks of over fifty stitches on his chest and back; he’d had three separate bike accidents, one of which was bad enough to require a new hip and a rebuilt jaw; he’d been shot twice, once superficially and once in the gut, and he’d once had a nasty run-in with an electrified fence. All in all, he was no stranger to hospital emergency rooms. But none of it, not even all of it together, was as bad as this. This made him want to die.
He’d awakened, groggy, shivering, and naked, in a cave of some kind. It was almost completely dark, just a pinhole of light from under a thick metal door, and smelled horribly of rotten meat and some other nasty, unidentifiable muskiness. He’d scoured every inch of the cave, but there was nothing there except some old bones, some loose rocks, and a lot of rough, sometimes wet, stone walls. Making do, he’d gripped a fist-sized rock and then settled down to wait.
Naturally, he’d wondered about things. For one, where the hell was he? Was this really a cave? It had the feel of being underground, so maybe. For another, how had he gotten here? Last thing he remembered, he’d been drugged by the nurse, out on the side of the road somewhere. What had happened? Had someone found him and brought him here?
He’d been sitting there wondering for maybe three hours when the door rattled and then swung open. Light, feeble but nonetheless blinding, had poured into his cave. He’d been ready, poised behind the door with the rock, but no one had come into the cave. Instead, he’d heard a strange, high-pitched voice from without:
“Come out, come out!” it had called, sing-song and sounding like either a woman or an adolescent male. “We gotcha covered, so don’t try anything stupid! Come out, come out, whoever you are!”
Warily, his eyes struggling to adjust to the brightness, he’d come forth, still gripping the rock, into a larger cave lit by crude torches. And then he’d dropped the rock and nearly shit his pants (if he’d had any) as he’d looked around.
Standing, squatting, leaning and even hanging on the walls, were what he could only think of as monsters. About ten in number, some were tall and thin, with grossly elongated limbs and digits and tall thin heads. Some were smaller and wide, with squished-down bodies like flabby pink trash bags. One had three great flipper-like appendages sprouting from his chest, and another had no legs but a great, slug-like pseudopod instead. And while most had what passed for eyes and mouths, comprising vague approximations of faces, the effect was more horrifying than humanizing. Yes, it was a whole crew of flat-out, no shit, dyed-in-the-wool monsters.
Blinking, horrified and confused and wondering if he wasn’t still asleep, drugged and dreaming, he’d cast about at these… things, but none of them had said anything. One of them had sort of grinned at him, if that was what it was doing, and one had licked its lips, but none of them spoke.
“Wha…” he’d stammered. “What the fuck is this?”
Then one of them had spoken up, but this one hadn’t been a monster. From out of their midst instead had come a regular, normal human man. Well, normal in comparison, anyway. Thin and slight, with long blond dreadlocks and a girlish, clean-shaven, paper-colored face, he wore an outlandish costume of some kind, once probably a stage outfit, that of an Elizabethan-era king, tights, doublet, robes and all. It reminded the Hunter of a picture he’d once seen of Henry the Eighth, only this guy was thin and had dreads. And was standing there in a gang of monsters straight out of a fever nightmare.
Smiling a weird, crooked sort of smile, this bizarre individual had strutted out from among the freaks and eyed the Hunter up and down. For his part, the Hunter had waited and had tried not to laugh at this weirdo, to not make a move by trying to fight or flee, to not go insane from the sheer freakiness of it all, and to not puke at the sight of the misshapen beings and the stink all around him. It hadn’t been easy.
Finally the skinny dude in the king suit had had enough of eyeballing him.
“What have we here?” he’d said, his voice like cotton candy covered in syrup. The Hunter had waited and glared back, trying to look as tough as he could, standing there completely nude as he was, until the little weirdo had gone on. “A topsider, for certain, but of what sort? Do you have a name?”