When the Jeep started hitting them, his brain fell into darkness.
-DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN-
13
Described by waxen moonlight, Cut River was a cemetery.
The buildings were leaning headstones and the homes were shadow-crawling crypts and the cars and trucks were caskets and burial vaults, lids sprung open, their cadaverous armies spilled into the night.
Lisa Tabano, her buzz bottoming like a freighter scratching its belly on a shoal, stumbled along behind Johnny Davis, he of the guns and the war that never completely ended. Disillusioned, distrustful, paranoid, but ultimately a good man, she decided. It was just that Uncle Sam had pissed on him so many times, he couldn’t keep his head above the stink.
She was starting to feel the need again.
Not bad yet, but it was coming.
In an hour or so it would be there, all right, nibbling at her insides. And the really bad part was that day by sufferable day, the highs were of shorter duration. She was only snorting heroin right now, but really, how long would it be until she was shooting?
Johnny walked point ahead of her, pausing now and again, crouching down low, then signaling her to continue.
It made her think that he’d probably been waiting for some action since the war ended.
And now he had it.
They crept past a row of blank storefronts and Johnny stopped. “In here,” he said to her.
It was a sporting goods store.
The plate glass door was shattered.
Inside, battery-powered emergency lights lit up the exit in the rear, casting ghoulish, lurching shadows everywhere. Displays were trashed, tipped over. Glass cases were obliterated. Shelves were emptied. It looked like looters had danced a merry destructive dance here.
But that wasn’t the case and she knew it.
“What the hell do we want here?” Lisa asked, setting her guitar case down and stepping over heaps of camouflage hunting clothes that smelled like urine.
Johnny had a Tekna flashlight out, scanning the debris. “They really went through this place, eh? I was in here just before sundown, picking up a few things. They must’ve come since.”
Lisa slid a cigarette in her mouth, lit it up. “Mind?” she said.
“You might draw them in, rock star.”
“But I’ve got you, my own little Rambo. What me worry?”
He chortled deep in his throat as he dug madly through outdoor clothing—hunter’s orange, Carhartt work clothes, waterproof tarps. He pulled a dark rubber poncho from the jumble, held it up, examined it carefully. He threw it at Lisa. “Catch.”
She pulled it off her face. “Are we going on a mission or getting out of here?”
“We’re evading, baby. E and E. Escape and evasion. It’s the name of the game.” He leaped over piles of winter boots, hiking shoes, slid a canoe out of the way. “Here, these’ll look sweet on you.” He tossed a pair of rubber boots at her. “They’re all the rage, baby. I hear Hendrix wore ’em at Monterey.”
She laughed, pulling the boots over her Nikes. “Christ, you are old.”
“You know it.”
“Should I ask why I have to wear boots or is that some mission secret?”
He grinned at her, all teeth and eyes, his face darkened with black camo paint. “I’d tell ya, sweet thing, but then I’d have to fuck ya.”
“Yeah, I’ve always wanted to do it with Al Jolson. Nice makeup. It’s so you.”
Johnny found the freeze-dried backpacker’s food and stuffed some in his pack. He pulled out a pistol, broke it open, snapped it closed and handed it to Lisa. “Know how to use it?”
She held it like it had been dipped in feces. “I don’t like guns.” She looked from it to him. “I don’t approve of them.”
He made a face, said, “Listen, I don’t approve of condoms either. No fun. But if I’m gonna slap skins with a hooker, I wear one. Assures my survival. And if you’re gonna stay alive in this shithole, you’ll need a gun. Maybe not, but maybe so.” He waited for an argument, was surprised, maybe, at how tolerant, how patient he was with her. It had been a long time since he’d been that way with anyone, let alone a female. “It’s a thirty-eight. Revolver, doesn’t jam. Six-shots. Safety is off. Bad guys comin’ down on ya, aim it and pull the trigger.”
Sighing, she accepted his logic and slid the little .38 into her coat pocket, hoping like hell she wouldn’t have to use it on anyone. She wasn’t a pacifist really, but violence was negative and solved nothing… that was, under normal circumstances. But here, in this hellzone where civilization had ground to a halt, all that mattered was who survived, not what sort of principals or moral integrity they possessed.
Somebody (or some thing) came looking for trouble, goddamn if she wasn’t going to give them some (to paraphrase the old Johnny Winters’ tune).
“Put that poncho on,” he said, more of an order than anything else.
She did, not liking the idea too much, but once it was over her head it made her feel warm and protected. She put the .38 in the front pocket.
She walked around.
The phone had been ripped off the wall, the cash register and computer smashed on the floor. She saw the remains of a cell phone.
Whatever these things were, they had a definite hard-on for technology.
Savages, she thought. They worship darkness, hate anything modern.
Johnny was still searching through the mess. He finally held up what looked like a short boat hook and nodded, satisfied.
“We going fishing for big ones?”
“You’ll see. Let’s go.”
Lisa was glad the windows were broken so she didn’t have to catch a reflection of herself, how utterly foolish she must’ve looked in that huge poncho and squeaking boots. She picked up her guitar case and purse and led the way back out onto the sidewalk.
And heard it before she saw it.
Low, guttural growling, the sound of claws scratching concrete.
She froze up tight as cherries in a deep freeze, motionless, helpless, staring at the huge, mangled German Shepherd a few feet away. Its left ear was missing, its coat filthy and stained with blood and bits of clinging leaves, sticks. There were great patches of skin ripped free from its battered skull, one of its eyes a gored hole. Its snout was bloody pulling away from lethal white teeth. Ropes of vile foamy saliva dangled from its mouth. The good ear was flattened against the skull as it made to leap.
Johnny shoved her out of the way as the dog leapt.
It made it maybe three feet before it took a load of buckshot straight on that vaporized its head into bloody mucilage. Its body tumbled out into the road, legs still pistoning.
Johnny took Lisa by the arm. “C’mon, lady, time to march.”
She realized then that she was lost in a dream for nearly a block, Johnny leading her like the good shepherd with a lost lamb. Then she came out of it, thinking that she needed a fix.
But now wasn’t the time.
She’d been lucky so far, way too lucky. First with the woman at her parent’s house, then with the two punks that Johnny had clipped for her, and now with the dog.
How long could it possibly hold? How long?
Johnny stopped on a quiet street. “Way I see it,” he explained to her, “they’re not going to let us just walk out of here. My guess is that by now they’ve got this town closed-up tight. Which means, essentially, we’re prey.”
“Prey?”
He nodded. “We’re the enemy here, baby. Don’t you get it? We’re the weird ones, they’re normal. Normal because they’re the majority. They’ve got two choices with us: make us like them or kill us.”