Carl smiled up at him again.
“Get to your feet and keep walking,” Andre tried again.
He knew, without a doubt, that his cousin would be able to stand and walk again, even with a bullet in his leg. Whatever was wrong with him had given him a newfound strength. Like Andre thought, Carl rose to his feet. For a second, it looked like he might try to lunge at him again, but then he turned and continued walking.
They reached Andre’s Chevy pickup as the sun waved its final goodnights and plunged them into darkness. Carl continued onto the paved road like he didn’t even recognize the truck. For a moment, Andre watched his cousin stumble onto the street, showing none of the wisdom ingrained in him since he was a kid. All the times Aunt Becky told them not to go wandering in the street. To stick to the sidewalks or the sides of the roads. “Drunks and pedophiles are drivin’ around everywhere!” she’d warned them. They never walked down the center of the street, but there Carl was, right smack dab in the middle of it, walking to nowhere in particular.
“Carl!” Andre yelled.
The man that used to be his cousin stopped walking.
“Carl!” he tried again.
Carl turned around but didn’t look directly at him. It was almost like he couldn’t see him. It seemed to get dark faster than usual. Andre didn’t want to be out here with Carl at all, and he dreaded the darkness. He feared it, and Andre had never feared anything before.
As he stood there and watched the Carl thing look around in every direction except the right one, Andre wondered if he should simply leave the man out here by himself. If he did, he could go home, shower, and forget this day ever happened.
This is your cousin, man. He’s family. You can’t leave him out here like this.
If it were anybody else, he knew he would have fled the scene, but this was his big cousin. As dimwitted as Carl was, and as many times as Andre had to pull him out of a drugged-up or drunken stupor, he would never be frustrated enough or afraid enough to leave him stranded or in harm’s way.
“Carl,” Andre said once more. “I’m over here, buddy.”
His cousin seemed to home in on his voice and began to walk toward him. The shadows covered his face, and Andre was thankful they did. He knew what he’d see if they didn’t. That crazed, drool-dripping grin.
“Carl, listen to me,” Andre said. “I want you to climb into the back of my truck. Go ahead. Get in there in the bed.”
Andre expected to see bloody footprints leading to his truck, but there were none. There wasn’t nearly enough blood. His cousin should have been bleeding out at this point. If it were any other man in any other situation, Andre would have put a tourniquet on him, but he wouldn’t dare get close enough to his cousin to try that.
As Carl slid into the back of the truck, only a light smear stretched from the tailgate to the back where Carl had propped himself up.
Andre moved to the door of the truck. “The other side,” he said. “Move to the other side. I ain’t lettin’ you get near me.”
Carl didn’t budge.
“Get to the other side of the fuckin’ truck, Carl!” Andre ordered.
He was losing his shit. He’d wanted to beat the darkness and he’d already lost that battle. Now, he was stuck out here with this crazed lunatic cousin of his.
Luckily, Carl obeyed and slid to the passenger side of the bed. Andre glanced at the truck frame and made sure nothing had moved from his cousin to the metal. It was some kind of bug. He’d seen the black cloud leap from the deer to his cousin’s head.
That shit ain’t happenin’ to me. Fuck these bugs or whatever they are.
When he finally got in the truck, he locked both doors and made sure both windows were rolled up tight. He nearly forgot the small window that led to the truck bed. He locked it too. Through it, he could see his cousin sitting there staring up at the sky. That stupid smile was still on his mouth.
Andre tossed his rifle onto the seat next to him. Carl’s was still out there in the woods. That was another reason he knew his cousin wasn’t his cousin anymore. The real Carl would have never left his rifle behind like that. He would have thrown a fit if Andre didn’t let him bring it with them. This thing sitting behind him wasn’t normal.
The hospital was a good forty-five miles away, so Andre stepped on the gas and planned to speed the entire way. He only needed to make it back to Clydesville. The hospital there wasn’t huge like major cities, but it would do. All he wanted to do was drop Carl off so he could say he’d done the right thing.
And you want to get him help.
Of course, he wanted his cousin to get help, but deep down he didn’t believe it was possible. Something was seriously wrong with him. A hundred movies he’d seen flashed through his mind.
In The Blob, a meteor crashed and when a homeless man poked at it with a stick, it leaped onto him.
In Night of the Creeps, slugs jumped into people’s mouths and turned them into zombies.
In The Thing… Oh, God, so many bad things happened in The Thing.
None of the people in any of those movies was saved in a hospital, but that was where Andre was headed. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw Carl still seated in the back. Still staring at the sky. The way he sat reminded Andre of an animal. Hunched over but seeming to enjoy the wind the way a dog does when it sticks its head out a car window.
Andre felt like he wasn’t in the real world. He’d felt that way all afternoon. Since he’d noticed how silent the woods were. Now, he wished another car would fly past him on the road. At least that would remind him he wasn’t alone in the world.
All was silent, and that kind of deep quiet wasn’t Andre’s friend. Too many thoughts came with the absence of sound. He glanced in the rearview mirror. Carl was still looking at the sky.
The stereo can fix the silence.
He mashed his palm against the stereo dial and it instantly came to life right in the middle of the song he and Carl had been listening to when they parked the truck. ‘Big River’ by Johnny Cash played and its upbeat, guitar picking sound instantly livened up Andre’s mood.
Andre was thrumming his fingers against the steering wheel when he glanced in the rearview mirror again. Carl’s face filled the space, grinning back at him from the other side of the glass. Andre jumped, jerked the wheel, and nearly took them off the road.
The pickup kicked up gravel as it slid over the side of the road and then arched back onto the street.
“Jesus!” Andre yelled.
Carl’s palm slapped the window softly like he wanted to get Andre’s attention.
“What is it, Carl?” Andre asked. “I damn near killed us both.”
Carl’s hand curled into a fist and knocked slowly and steadily.
Knock… knock… knock…
“Cut it out and sit still!”
Knock… knock… knock…
Through the rearview mirror, Andre could see his cousin staring back at him, grinning. His knuckles tapped at the glass. Soft at first. Then a little harder and harder still.
“Carl, stop!”
Knock… knock… knock…
“I’m taking you to the hospital so you can get help with your leg,” he reminded the man in the bed of the truck.
He wasn’t sure if the words got through the glass, especially with the commotion of Carl’s persistent knocking and Johnny Cash belting out his tune. He considered shutting off the music, but that would leave him alone with Carl’s noise. This thing behind him was pounding on the glass, and Andre knew they wouldn’t make it to the hospital.