Outlive (The Baggers Trilogy, #1) (25 page)

             
Baggs turned to Bite. “You said you’d take me home if I wanted to go home.”

             
“You don’t want to go home,” Bite said.

             
Baggs looked up towards the front of the cabin. The space between the back seats and the driver’s seat was divided by dark glass; he couldn’t see who was driving them.

             
The model scooted over and squeezed herself into the seat next to Baggs. Their thighs were touching. She leaned toward him, pressing her body against him. “You don’t want to go home,” she said, repeating Bite’s words. “Come over with us. Please! Please, please, please!”

             
She looked up at Baggs with striking green eyes. Her breath smelled like she had been drinking wine. She wrapped both of her arms around Baggs’s left arm, hugging it to her chest.

             
“This is Lilly,” Bite said, gesturing with his right hand; Baggs again noticed that Bite’s middle finger on that hand was cut down to a nub. His voice sounded even more gravely than it had outside when Baggs had been so intimidated by him. His eyes looked colder, more distant.
Was the way he was speaking with me outside him trying to be charming?

             
“Hi,” Lilly said, looking up at Baggs childishly, and holding on even tighter to his arm. Baggs thought,
what are they giving her to flirt with me?
He had no misconceptions about his appearance; he was ugly. His nose was large and bulbous, as were his ears, which weren’t symmetrical. Even as a fifteen year old, his body was obtusely hairy.
A girl as beautiful as Lilly does not typically fall for a guy like me on first appearance.

             
“And the handsome son of a bitch sitting on the bench across from me is Darius Till, the baseball player,” Bite added.

             
Baggs didn’t follow baseball, but had heard the name. He nodded at the professional athlete. Darius nodded back.

“Who are they?” Baggs said, looking at the zombie-like people sitting beside Bite. They didn’t acknowledge that anyone was speaking.

              Bite frowned. It appeared that he didn’t like Baggs asking questions about those two people. “The male is Pointer, and the female is Pinky.”

             
“Enough about them, Baggs! Stop being modest. Tell me about yourself,” Lilly said, hugging his shoulder and leaning into him. He could feel her chest against his arm.

             
Baggs didn’t feel like talking with her. His mouth was dry. Lilly was obviously a distraction—something to make him want to go along for the ride to wherever they were headed. He addressed Bite: “I want you to take me home.”

             
“Relax, buddy. Lean back, enjoy Lilly. Everything is okay. You want some wine. Actually, no, I’m not asking. I insist. You need to relax a little bit.” He made this comment without much humor. He opened up a refrigerator that was built into the seat beside Baggs, and took out a cold wine glass and a bottle. He filled it up and handed it to Baggs. “Anyone else want some?” Lilly and Darius did. Pointer and Pinky didn’t respond.

             
Baggs watched as Lilly and Darius sipped on their wine.
Okay, so it’s not poisonous,
he thought.

             
“Drink,” Bite said, smiling with his huge, sharp teeth.

             
Baggs obeyed and sipped on the wine.

             
“Drink it all. You need to relax.”

             
The wine was strong and bitter. Baggs rarely drank wine; it was too expensive for him to purchase it at the bars.

             
“Darius plays for the London Cyclones,” Lilly told Baggs. “He’s their best home run hitter.”

             
“I don’t know about that,” Darius said. His voice was deep and smooth. “You ever been to a baseball game, Baggs?”

             
“No,” Baggs said. He felt nauseated. He looked outside as they zoomed past his parents’ apartment complex.

             
“I’ll get you some tickets. If you’re a friend of Mr. Snow’s, you’re a friend of mine.” He smiled. “Hell, you can even come hang out in the locker room after a game.”

             
“Get him two tickets,” Lilly said, leaning her head on Baggs’s shoulder. “I want to go with him.”

             
“Bite, can we stop the car, please?” Baggs asked.

             
Bite frowned with his big, muzzle-like mouth. His lips were chapped. “Drink some more wine. Finish that glass, then I’ll get you some more.”

             
Baggs took a drink. Lilly and Darius Till shared a knowing look when they thought Baggs wasn’t watching.
They sent a baseball player and a model to try to get me to ride with them? What could be so bad that you need to use those kinds of lures?
Baggs wondered.

             
“Finish your cup of wine, two more big gulps,” Bite said.

             
Baggs obeyed. He was so anxious that he barely even tasted it. Bite filled his glass again, then put the bottle back in its compartment.

             
For a few seconds, it was quiet in the car. The only sounds were the grumble of the motor and the wheezing inhalations and exhalations of Pinky and Pointer. Baggs glanced at them and thought,
they seriously look dead. It’s like we’re riding with corpses in the car. What the hell happened to them?

             
“Where are we going?” Baggs asked.

             
Lilly and Darius shared another look. When they weren’t trying to entertain him, they seemed nervous.

             
“My Boss’s mansion,” Bite said, “like I told you.”

             
“What are we going to do there?”

             
“Oh my god! Do you really not listen? What is wrong with you? I already told you, we’re having a party,
damn it!”
Bite raised his voice and his eyes conveyed a dark message to Baggs.
“You’re going to have fun, damn it!”

             
“Don’t yell at him,” Lilly said. She got on her knees and kissed Baggs’s cheek. She brushed his hair.

             
A terrible idea came into Baggs’s mind.
What if these people are friends of Baldy’s? What if they’re taking me out to some abandoned train yard to chop my head off?

             
Baggs looked at the locked door. He wished he had never gotten into the limo. If he had taken a different route home today, he would have never run into Bite and never gone on this terrible journey.
But if I didn’t run into him today, he would have found me some other time. He was waiting for me in the fog.

             
“I’m sorry that I yelled at you, Baggs,” Bite said coldly. “It’s just that I want you to have a good time tonight, and you’re not loosening up. You’ll have fun once you get to my boss’s mansion. How about this, if you’re there for thirty minutes and you’re not having a good time, I’ll take you home. I promise.”

             
Darius chimed in: “If you’re not having a good time after thirty minutes,
I’ll
take you home myself if you want to leave.” He laughed. “But boy, I don’t think you’re going to want to go home.”

             
“Okay,” Baggs said. He knew that he was being awkward, but he still wasn’t convinced that they weren’t taking him to a train yard to put a bullet through his skull in some abandoned bathroom.

              Ten minutes later, the limousine pulled up to a twenty-foot tall iron gate. The gate was flanked with huge stone pillars that had statues of gargoyles sitting on top. Out the window, Baggs could see an enormous mansion in the distance; this one trumped the houses that were built in Rolling Gardens.

             
The limousine driver talked to a guard, the gate opened, and they began to move along a private road between fields of green grass. They drove over small bridges and through a series of neatly trimmed trees. To the left of the road, there was a pond with a glowing fountain spraying water high into the foggy, night sky. After going further down the path, the limousine stopped in front of wide, marble steps that led up to great wooden doors that were inlaid with glass and crystals.

             
So I guess Bite wasn’t lying about the models or the mansion,
Baggs thought.
Maybe I was wrong about this guy. Maybe everything is going to be okay.

             
But he still couldn’t explain the two zombie-people who were in the car with him.

             
Well, if things go bad, I may be able to sneak out. I’m only about three miles from home, five at the most. I can walk that distance.

             
“Home sweet home. Let’s party,” Darius said.

             
Bite held his right hand up. “First, I’m going to tell Baggs something.” He looked at Baggs, his fake eye glistening in the pale light. “My boss’s name is Mr. Snow. And I want to tell you a story about Mr. Snow before we go in, so that you know what you’re getting yourself into. When I was young and dumb, like you, I thought I was a big shot, like you probably do too. I was invited out to Mr. Snow’s house, just like you.

             
“Mr. Snow, God bless him, can be a little harsh on people. We went out back and we had a chat. He said something to me that I didn’t think was very nice, and when he turned his back, I held up my middle finger to him.” Bite smiled. “Now, I’m only telling you this so that you don’t make the same mistake.”

             
Baggs nodded.

             
“Don’t go repeating this story around, you hear?”

             
Baggs nodded.

             
Bite continued. “So I held up my middle finger to him when his back was turned, but what I didn’t know was that he could see my reflection in the window. He went inside, as though he hadn’t seen. I thought he hadn’t seen. Night went on pretty normally. Lots of booze, some pretty girls like Lilly, that kind of stuff. Around midnight, though, someone stopped the music. I looked around and noticed that everyone seemed to be staring at me. I didn’t know what was going on. I’ll admit; I was a little scared.

             
“Then Mr. Snow came into the room. He told me to get on my knees. Now, everyone didn’t
seem
to be staring at me, everybody
was
staring at me. Something you need to know about Mr. Snow; he’s the most intimidating man I’ve ever met.”

             
Baggs nodded, thinking,
what kind of man does Bite consider scary?

             
Bite went on. “So, I start getting scared, and I get to my knees. He then calmly explains that he saw me hold my middle finger up to him when he turned his back earlier.” Bite stared at Baggs. “Guess what he asked me to do.”

             
“I don’t know,” Baggs said weakly.

             
“He asked me to bite off my middle finger, so that I could never flip him off again.” Bite looked at what was left of his finger with his one good eye. “And so I did.”

             
It was silent in the limousine for a moment. Baggs wondered,
what happened to Bite’s eye then.

             
“You must understand, now, that that’s why they call me Bite; it’s because I bit off my own finger.”

             
Lilly spoke up from where she was leaned against Baggs. She was examining her own hand, as though considering what Bite had just said. “How did you do it? I don’t think that I could bite off my own finger.”

             
Bite laughed; the sound seemed to make the temperature in the car drop ten degrees. “If I didn’t bite it off, other things were going to happen to me. In the end, I thought that losing my finger was a hell of a lot better than the alternative. Let’s go.”

             
He opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement, which was well lit by dozens of lights in the doorway. “C’mon, big guy,” Bite said. Baggs got out, and was followed by Lilly and Darius. “Pinker, Pointer, c’mon,” Bite said into the limo. Slowly, with popping joints and grunts of effort, Pinker and Pointer moved out of the car. It was strange watching them move after they had been still for so long. It was like watching a corpse begin to stir as it becomes animated. The two of them still did not look around much, and their expressions remained sickly relaxed and dull.

             
The night was cool, and a chilly wind blew over their backs as the group made their way to the door. Baggs noticed that Darius moved with a level of grace that wasn’t customary for someone so big. As Pointer and Pinky climbed the marble stairs, they groaned with open, relaxed throats. Their joints continued to pop and creak as they moved upward. Lilly walked closely beside Baggs. When standing, he was a full foot taller than her and could see down her dress. She caught him looking, and didn’t readjust her clothing. She smirked at him.