Dead Stop (26 page)

You son of a
bitch! You would have actually done it!

Holly didn’t
have the breath to scream at him as she dove into the car and snatched the door
shut behind her. She could wait till later. When they reached Austin, she fully
intended to inform Mr. Gerald Plimpton that they were through…while he lay
clutching his thrice kicked balls on the ground. But until that glorious
moment, getting out of here would do.

Holly made a
silent promise to send help back to the Textro as she wrestled on her seat
belt. At least she could do that much for them. She knew she had done it for
all the wrong reasons, but maybe turning this last act of submission into
something useful would help her face the girl in the mirror a little better.
Assuming she made it out of here…

The smack on the
window caused her to look over and directly into the eyes of the nightmare only
inches away.

It must have
once been somebody’s little girl.

Like all the
others, the face was now gone…but the pigtails still remained. The smallish
claws slapping the glass had bone tipped fingers, and Holly realized that even
this little thing had ripped its way up through wood and earth to the world
above. Its child-sized skull was level with Holly’s own, and it snapped and
scrabbled at the glass like a maddened animal.

Other hands
started smacking the windows around her.

“Gerald! Get us
the hell out of here!”

Gerald finally
managed to slam home the keys, and the engine roared to life. Holly gave silent
thanks that he had just had the BMW overhauled. A second later he found the
headlights and turned them on.

She almost
wished he hadn’t.

“Holy shit! Look
at that!” Gerald breathed and pointed out the windshield, “I was right! That
ignorant yokel animal doctor had the nerve to lecture me and I was
right
!
HE
sure as hell didn’t come from no graveyard! I wonder what that
backwoods bitch has to say about
this
!”

His finger shook
in triumphal justification as it pointed at the cause of his outburst.

Outside, the
enormous, ravaged corpse of Buddha Boy Norville stood bathed in the headlights.

Unlike the other
dead things roaming the parking lot this night, he still had most of his face.
Only one section that included a cheek and part of his neck was missing, giving
him a strangely bulldog-like appearance. But the damage didn’t stop there.

Massive tears
ran down the sides and front of his vast torso, giving his once great belly the
appearance of pleated cloth. Large gobs of fat and meat protruded from the
bottom of most of the ripped sections, and a two foot length of colon hung from
his left side. His pleated flesh wobbled and swayed like a skirt as he lumbered
around to the side of the car.

“Gerallllld”
Holly moaned. “Get us ooouuut of heeeerrrrree…”

“Shhhhh….”
Gerald’s head swiveled to track the huge monstrosity. “Just don’t move and let
them settle down. Remember, they can’t really make sense of what they see
through wet glass. Pretty quick they’ll lose track of us and go back over to
where the action is.”

“Goddammit,
Gerald…”

“Just hush!” He
turned towards her with a finger to his lips. “And relax. This glass is a lot
tougher than the stuff in those windows anyway. Now be still. Everything is
okay.”

“I don’t think
so,” She frowned through the rain pebbled windshield. The pale monster swatted
one of its skeletal companions out of the way as it reached the driver’s door.
“I think this one is different. I’m serious! I think you need to hit the gas
right now!”

“I just had this
thing refurbished. I’m not panicking and plowing over a bunch of these things
and wrecking the front end. Not when…”

She saw the huge
zombie lean down and peer through the glass at the back of Gerald’s head. The
bloated white face almost filled the window.  Its milky eyes zeroed
straight in on the oblivious redhead, and Holly had no doubt it knew exactly
what it was looking at.

“Dammit, Gerald!”
she shrieked. “Floor it! Now!”

Too late.

The man turned
back to the window just as it exploded inwards in a shower of fractured glass.
Holly screamed and threw up her hands to keep the flying fragments out of her
face. A split second later Gerald’s flailing elbow caught her in the side of
the head, causing her to see stars. She could feel him thrashing in the seat
beside her, as she tried to clear her vision and get a grip on what was
happening.

Holly shook her
throbbing head and looked over to see Gerald dying.

The monster had
driven its fist through the window and now it’s massive hand clenched most of
her boyfriend’s face, with its fingers hooked under his jawline. She could hear
the bones of Gerald’s face crack under the things grip, and knew the thrashing
was due to him suffocating.  It seemed to be trying to drag him headfirst
out the window. Holly realized the only reason it hadn’t already succeeded was
due to the seatbelt holding the man in.

Not that it
helped him much.

He made a
strangled gurgle behind the massive hand as it tightened further, causing more
popping noises. Blood began to squeeze out between its thick fingers. Gerald
flopped in the seat like a dying fish, the visible portions of his head now
blue from oxygen deprivation. Holly knew he was going to die if she didn’t do
something, and do it damn quick.

The girl grabbed
the gear shift and ground the transmission into gear. Then she unsnapped her
seatbelt, threw her leg over the gear shift and stomped the gas pedal. Beside
her, Gerald twitched and spasmed, his head now twisted up and back as the
monster continued to pull. The engine roared and the tortured squeal of rubber
on slick asphalt cut through the din of the storm.

For a moment,
the car didn’t move.

Then the wheels
found their purchase and the BMW leapt forward. Unfortunately, physics were not
to be denied and that meant something had to give. In this case it was Gerald’s
neck…

…as his head
tore loose in one wet, gristle popping, rip.

Holly shrieked
anew as the headless corpse geysered blood and fell over against her. Gore
fountained from the severed neck, drenching the girl as she fought to get the
grisly thing off of her. It wasn’t easy due to the reclining position she was
forced into by having her foot on the gas pedal. She kept it jammed to the
floor, barely noticing the multiple thuds against the car’s bumper as it
rocketed blindly past the truck stop towards the rear of the parking lot.

With a howl of
despair, Holly pushed the corpse back upright…only to have it slump forward now
that it had slipped free of the shoulder restraint, and fall forward onto the
steering wheel. It turned under the cadaver’s weight, and she felt the car veer
sharply to the left.

Even dead, the
jackass was still doing all the driving that mattered.

Holly fought to
push herself up so her head would be above the level of the dashboard and she
could see. At the same time her foot groped for the brake pedal, but Gerald’s
legs were in the way. In the end it didn’t matter, for she got her head up just
in time to see it was too late.

A wall of corn
stalks filled the headlight beams outside the windshield.

The BMW went off
the asphalt and into the soft, deep mud of the plowed furrows at over sixty
miles per hour. It was almost like hitting a wall.

Out of her own
shoulder strap due to her efforts with the gas pedal, Holly slammed against the
dashboard with bone crunching force as the vehicle smashed into the drenched
soil, bounced out, then plowed another long trench into the mud. The airbag
deployed after the bounce, almost smacking the slight girl unconscious while
sparing her a second impact during the final collision with the soft earth.
After another couple of seconds the heavy car bulldozed to a stop…buried up to
its axles in the streaming ground.

Nothing moved
for a moment, the hissing of the rain in the corn stalks closing back in as a
substitute for silence.

Holly became
aware of the storm hammering the roof in the darkness, unsure if minutes or
mere seconds had passed since the crash. She lay, half slid down the seat to
the floor. Every part of her body hurt, and she didn’t want to think about the
weight now leaning against her from the driver’s side. She knew what it had to
be, but this time she felt pretty sure the blood on her face belonged to her…

…along with
assorted fractures, contusions, and god only knew what other damage.

A feeble attempt
to raise one arm sent jagged shards of crystal sharp agony through her back and
side. She was hurt…hurt bad. The only reason the girl didn’t scream was because
the pain from inhaling almost caused her to black out. She barely clung to
consciousness, and the effort to do even that drained her by the second. Her
grip on the world was fading. It felt as if her mind circled a black hole at
the back of her head, soon to be sucked in by its inexorable pull.

Some small part
of Holly realized with a remote sense of sadness that when that happened there
would be no coming back. It would be her final exit. The big goodbye.

She was dying.

And she wasn’t
even scared.

Holly lay there
in the dark wreckage, barely moved by it all. The thought of dying in a half
sunk BMW in the middle of a soggy Texas cornfield only generated a mild sense
of bemusement. It sure didn’t live up to the dramatic passings performed by
many of the actresses she had aspired to follow. It didn’t appear she would
even get the benefit of an audience.

Then a flare of
lightning lit the night, and she saw she wasn’t alone.

Not even the
skeletal face peering in over the edge of the driver’s side window alarmed her.
Her only response was to think the pigtails were a sad touch.

You were
somebody’s baby, weren’t you.
Her mind did another shallow orbit of that
black pit, and she understood the next one would be its last.
You know what?
When I was your age I wore pigtails, too. I guess compared to you, I got bonus
time. No point in complaining…you get what you get. And once you’re dead, what
difference does it make?” You just sleep the Big Sleep, not caring about the
nastiness of how you died or where you fell.” Right?

Paraphrasing the
line of Raymond Chandler’s reminded her of Humphrey Bogart, and Holly smiled at
the thought she still had control over one last thing in this life. One last
thing…even though it would be unwitnessed by any audience that would appreciate
it, it would still be hers.

Her exit line.

The dim outline
of the thing shifted position, as if trying to discern whether somebody
inhabited the car or not. In silhouette, it looked like a child peeking over a
candy counter. Holly supposed in its own grisly way, it was. She gave it a
feeble smile, and summoned the last of her strength.

“Here’s lookin’
at you, kid.”

It was barely
more than a whisper, but it was enough.

The small horror
locked its gaze on the source of her voice, and scrabbled frantically at the
edge of the window.  The scratch of its claws and shoeless feet made a
loud, frenzied staccato against the metal of the door. After a few seconds, the
little monster’s struggles pulled it over into the car and it immediately
launched itself at the still form in the far seat.

But Holly wasn’t
there anymore.

Behind the
gentle smile, the girl had made her final orbit and fallen down that endless
hole into nowhere.

###

Back at the
truck stop, three horrified pair of eyes stared out the windows at the monster
that used to be Buddha Boy Norville. It calmly tore a chunk out of Gerald’s
fleshy head with its teeth as it lumbered towards the gas pumps.

“Oh my God,”
Rachel breathed aloud in open disbelief, “the poor little bastard was right.”

Chapter Eight:
Stormbreak

Stormbreak -
Rachel

“Marisa,” Rachel
carefully used one of the last strips of cloth available to wrap the end of the
girls foot, “I can’t tell if you have a broken toe or not…not without an X-ray.
Truthfully, I don’t think it is. But I can definitely say you aren’t going to
be winning any footraces for a while, so keep that in mind. Okay?”

The dark haired
waitress hugged herself and nodded, not bothering to reply. That worried Rachel
more than the injury to the girl’s foot.

It’s getting
to us,
the doctor reflected as she glanced around the kitchen. 
We’re
all tired, scared, and starting to wear down. And it just keeps getting worse.
Every time something happens, it ends up being worse than before.

“Hey.” She
gently shook Marisa’s uninjured foot to catch her attention. “You still with
us?”

“I’m okay,” the
girl responded in a distracted voice, “I’m just trying to figure a couple of
things out. Have you talked to Harley yet?”

“Not yet.” She
gently worked Marisa’s sock back over her injured foot. “I know he wants to
show me something, but first things first. So I’ve got him doing something for
me until I’m done here. Somebody’s got to keep you two tough guys patched up,
you know.”

That elicited
just the hint of a smile at the corner of the young woman’s mouth.

“Thanks, doc. So
I’m still good to go?”

Rachel eyed the
girl judiciously.

“Well, I suppose
so.” She handed the waitress her shoe, then held up a warning finger as the
girl reached to take it. “But you’re going to have to use your own judgment,
depending on what you’re doing. I would recommend you avoid situations that
require you to run. Even if you can force yourself to do it, you won’t be as
fast and you won’t be able to keep it up long. And of course, it’s going to be
sore as hell.”