Midnight Special (7 page)

When he was a kid, he would have eaten this place up with a spoon. He wasn’t a kid anymore.

The hearse rolled to stop.

“Last stop!” Barnabas cackled as he opened the door.

Eva spread a blanket on the ground, as if they were having a picnic in a park. The crowd, once it was let in, filled the rolling hills like a fog. Barnabas sat in among them, a part of them, but separate. Matt marveled at the way he seemed to ride above the throng, passing his hands through them like the pope in Vatican Square. They worshipped him, Matt realized, and the thought made him feel a little sick in the pit of his stomach.

Barnabas cracked open a bottle of Craftsman beer and took a long drink from it. He leaned back on a headstone and sighed. “Isn’t it a beautiful night, Darren?”

Matt looked around. There was no one named Darren in the immediate vicinity. Just Eva stretched out over a grave like it was a tanning bed and Flint, carrying a basket of chicken and waffles out of the hearse. The running sores in Flint’s eyes were getting worse.

“Who’s Darren?” Matt asked.

“Darren McGavin. You know, Kolchak,
The Night Stalker
.” Barnabas reached behind himself and tapped the gravestone that he was resting on. It was a tall piece of marble, and over Barnabas’s head Matt could read the name etched in it. It looked familiar.

“He was the father in
A Christmas Story
, right?” Matt said.

“OK, we’ll accept that,” Barnabas said, sounding aggrieved. “All the Hollywood luminaries are buried here. DeMille. Valentino. Douglas Fairbanks. Junior and Senior. Mel Blanc. Peter Lorre. Even Johnny Ramone. I’m going to be buried over there. If I ever die.”

Matt took his duffel bag out and propped it up underneath himself—somehow he didn’t think it was right to use a headstone as a pillow.

Flint put the basket down in front of Barnabas and cleared his throat. He was obviously bringing up a touchy subject. “So, Barney…did you ever get the chance to read that new draft I did on my screenplay? You’ve had it for a couple of weeks now. Do you have any notes?”

“I said I’d get to it!” Barnabas snapped. The rudeness of his tone was palpable to Matt. Matt would never talk that way to someone who had just brought him a basket of chicken and waffles.

“He thinks I have nothing to do but read his shitty spec screenplays,” Barnabas said, laughing to Matt, as if Matt would understand, even though Matt didn’t know what a spec screenplay was, let alone what notes were.

“As a matter of fact, I did read it,” Barnabas went on. “It has promise, but, man, the third act still feels like I’ve wiped my ass with it a million times. It’s so predictable! You know what it reads like? A fucking Lifetime made-for-TV movie! I’d have flushed it down the toilet if it wouldn’t have stopped up the drain with its clichés!”

Flint blinked at him. One of the maggots in his right eye popped out and jumped down his cheek as his eyelid snapped shut. “OK,” he said, “but you think it has promise, right? If I work on it, you’ll read it again?”

“I suppose. But don’t expect me to keep wasting my time with such utter, boring, puerile bullshit, all right?”

“Thanks.” Flint scuttled off to sit with Eva.

Barnabas chuckled and whispered to Matt, “I didn’t actually read it, but I didn’t have to, to know it sucked.”

Barnabas settled down and sat facing the wall of a huge mausoleum that Matt guessed was going to be the screen. It was like the drive-in movie theater Matt went to once as a kid. Except, instead of cars, everyone was sitting on graves.

“Only in Hollywood, huh?” Barnabas said, as if echoing Matt’s thoughts.

“It seems a little disrespectful,” Matt said, his ass squirming on Maila Nurmi’s grave. Whoever that was.

“It would be disrespectful,” Barnabas agreed, “if these weren’t showbiz folk.” He patted the ground fondly. “They understand. The show must go on.”

The lights around them dimmed and the evening’s entertainment began. First there was some ancient cartoon full of dancing skeletons, all done in a rubbery, bouncy style that made Matt laugh, in spite of himself.

Then the main attraction. Matt had seen it before. It had really scared him when he was a boy.

Nothing scared him anymore.

So while Barbra was being chased through the black-and-white graveyard, Matt let his eyes wander over the crowd.

Everyone was wearing makeup—cavernous eyes, sunken cheeks, skull teeth drawn over their lips—but now that he was used to it, it didn’t fool him at all.

Flint, now, there was the real thing. The sores in his face were deepening, and Matt caught the telltale whiff of decaying flesh in the air.

How long would it be before this one turned violent?

All at once, Flint’s eyeball popped out of his head and drooped down his face.

“Yuck,” Barnabas said. “I never get used to that.”

Matt turned to Barnabas. “Get used to what?”

“Come on.” Barnabas grinned. “You see it too. Flint’s gone all ripe.”

Matt stared at Barnabas.

“Cowboy, you don’t have to pretend with me, you know,” Barnabas leaned in and whispered to Matt. “We’re two of a kind.”

“What do you mean?” Matt asked.

“I’ve been seeing ’em rot and go bad for close to a year now.” Barnabas took a sip from his beer and added, “Ever since I died.”

And then a shovel came swinging down at Barnabas’s head.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Where Flint had gotten the shovel from, Matt didn’t know. Perhaps it was in the back of the hearse when they drove here. Perhaps he’d picked it up from behind a tombstone, left there by some forgetful gravedigger when he was done with his day’s work. But he had it and he was aiming it at Barnabas like a hatchet.

The shovel came down with such force that it struck a spark off Darren McGavin’s headstone. Barnabas scooted away just in time, rolling aside like a trained gymnast. Like he wasn’t surprised. Like he was expecting it.

“You didn’t even read the damned thing!” Flint shouted and swung the shovel again, straight down at Barnabas. Barnabas skittered away, half climbing up Richard Blackwell’s tombstone, just avoiding the blow.

“If you’d read the fucking screenplay you’d have seen that I took your last notes and improved on them!” Flint was screaming as he raised the shovel for the killing stroke.

Matt was on his feet in an instant, his duffel in hand. He didn’t have time to pull the ax out. He just swung the whole duffel at the back of Flint’s head.

Flint spun around, affronted. “What the fuck was that?” he asked, insulted. “We’re talking here!”

Barnabas was on him in seconds, wrapping his arms around him from behind, pinning Flint’s arms to his sides.

“Now!” Barnabas yelled gleefully to Matt. “Clobber him!”

Matt was a bit taken aback by this order, but he did as he was told, clipping Flint on the jaw with the butt of his ax through the duffel.

Flint went down.

Barnabas looked at him, lying at his feet, and laughed. “I didn’t expect him to turn so soon.”

“What are you talking about?” Matt asked.

Barnabas ignored him. He was bending over the unconscious Flint, poking at his putrid eye like a little boy exploring the rotting carcass of some animal. “It’s so gross!” he said admiringly.

The crowd was coming around them now, curious at what the ruckus was about. Barnabas waved them aside. “My friend just had a little too much beer. Everything’s under control.”

He started lifting Flint up by the arms and gestured for Matt to grab his feet. “Come on, we’ll get him into the hearse.”

“What for?” Matt asked, puzzled.

“Well, we can’t just leave him here,” Barnabas said, like he was talking to a petulant child. “We’ll take him back to the theater. Get some coffee in him.”

“You don’t understand,” Matt said. “He’s not going to get better. He’s going to wake up and try to kill you.”

“Not if he’s cuffed to the wall.”

Who was Matt to argue with that? Besides, he couldn’t very well kill Flint here, in front of everybody. Better to lug him away and figure out what to do with him later.

So he grabbed Flint’s legs and started to haul him toward the hearse.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Eva asked.

“Not now, Eva,” Barnabas said. “Be a doll and open the back of the hearse.”

“Fuck you, Barney. Open it yourself.”

“Can’t you see my hands are full?”

In retrospect, Matt wondered if Flint had ever really been unconscious or if he was just waiting for the right moment to strike. It didn’t really matter, Matt supposed. All that mattered was that at that instant Flint’s hand shot up toward Barnabas’s face and grabbed hold, nails digging into his flesh.

Barnabas screamed a scream that sounded a little like his laugh and dropped Flint.

Flint’s hand fell with him, scratching deep grooves into Barnabas’s face. His legs were jerked out of Matt’s grasp, and as soon as he hit the ground, Flint sprang back up, nails at the ready, reaching out for Barnabas’s throat.

Eva screamed, and Matt looked over to where his duffel lay, left behind under Darren McGavin’s tombstone. Flint followed his gaze. Both men dived for the duffel, but Flint had the head start, so he got there first.

Flint picked up the duffel and examined it. He didn’t seem to know what he had—he had just seen that Matt wanted it. He shook it a couple of times and smiled.

Then he pulled out the ax.

“What the fuck?” Barnabas said, blood dripping from his gouged face as he watched Flint weighing the ax in his hands. “What the fuck do you have an ax for?” he asked Matt.

Because of situations like this
, Matt was going to reply when Flint charged at him.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Matt didn’t like fighting.

The more he did it, the more it became second nature to him, but he still hated it. It was brutal and ugly and it never ended well.

Flint was big, scary, and full of fury. But he didn’t know how to fight. Matt guessed he’d never been in a fight, a real fight, other than some playground scuffle when he was a child. So even though Flint had the ax and was pumped full of adrenaline and evil, it wasn’t really a fair contest.

Because over the past couple of years Matt had learned how to take care of himself.

When Flint came running at him, ax lifted above his head to strike, Matt went low and charged him, hitting him in the gut with his shoulder. Flint toppled over Matt, and the ax went crashing into John Huston’s crypt.

“What’s going on?” Eva cried.

Matt scrambled up and dashed to the ax before Flint could get his bearings. He seized the ax by the handle and swung it at Flint, just as he lunged for Matt, crying out, “You’re his new favorite, damn it!”

The ax struck Flint just below the temple.

If the ax had gone at him blade first, it would have chopped off the top of his head, spilling his brains all over John Huston’s nice marble sarcophagus. But Matt had turned the blade away so that the butt of the ax struck Flint on the brow and knocked him off his feet, felling him like a tree.

Matt didn’t really know why he spared Flint. Maybe it was because he felt sorry for him. Maybe it was just because there were all these people around and he’d have to explain himself.

Maybe it was because of Eva. Because she was looking at him with pure horror in her eyes.

“Why did you do that?” she asked.

He turned to her and was about to explain that he’d had to do it, to protect himself and her and everyone around them from what Flint had become.

But before he could speak, he felt someone grab his head from behind and twist it to the side violently. Matt saw stars and thought,
Somebody’s trying to break my neck
, as he fell to the ground. Fortunately that move, which looks so easy in the movies, is pretty hard to pull off correctly, and the “someone” had botched it, merely wrenching Matt’s vertebrae and giving him a bad case of whiplash.

He looked up to see Flint, on his feet again, not looking too worse for wear after the ax blow to his head, stepping over him and lunging for Eva.

Eva screamed.

Just then a shining object flashed down from above and clipped off Flint’s right thumb.

Matt looked over and saw Barnabas holding a sword. A samurai sword.

“We better go!” Barnabas said. Was he really laughing?

Flint fell to the ground, grasping his thumb and crying.

People were watching.

And applauding.

They’d seen Barnabas Yancey chopping off somebody’s thumb with a sword, thought about it, and decided it had to be an act. A part of a show Barnabas was putting on to promote a new movie. And to think they were there! A big hand all around!

Barnabas bowed, then grabbed Matt’s arm with one hand and Eva’s with the other and dashed to the hearse.

Eva slipped and Matt picked her up. She was oddly passive in his arms, and he realized that what she reminded him of was Barbra in the movie they were watching. Or weren’t watching. The first victim of the zombie attack, rendered catatonic by the shock of it all.

Death imitates art.

They made it to the hearse, and Barnabas clicked his remote control key and the doors unlocked for them.