Less Than Human (26 page)

"Nobody called time out. That's cheating." He prodded the rabbit with his pole and the quivering legs again ratcheted into motion. This was great; Elliot hated it when they gave up too easily.

The three of them raced across the scrub grass and out onto the open plain. The whine of the cycle was the only sound, and it was sucked up by the immense distances that surrounded them. A streak of blue smoke drifted out behind the bike, floating over the copper-colored landscape. Looking back, Elliot was reminded of the streaks left by the jets when they cut across the evening sky.

The rabbit began to slow so Elliot bumped him. A squeak of despair was drowned beneath the drone of the bike as the animal was sent rolling once more.

Elliot Cates and his brother lived in a fantasy world most of the time, horror movies and heavy metal were their favorite things in life. At the age when most kids were into Bambi and Disney sing-a-longs, Elliot had Timmy OD'ing on Freddy Krueger and Motley Crue.

Sarah Cates was forty-five when she'd had Timmy, and when Elliot was in the fifth grade, a kid told him that his parents wouldn't love him anymore. Elliot asked why. The kid said Elliot's parents would only care about Timmy, because he was a baby. That kid had turned out to be right. As far as Elliot's parents were concerned, he was invisible.

That was the way everyone treated Elliot.

Like he was invisible.

Even though Elliot tried to hate Timmy, it was hard to hate someone who thought you hung the moon. His younger brother was the only one who didn't ignore him. The little twerp was always following him around, always asking questions. It was annoying, and yet Elliot didn't mind, because, deep down, he knew that was as close as he was ever going to get to having someone love him.

The rabbit swerved, darted down a dry creek bed.

"Oh no, bad move, Mister Bunny Rabbit." Elliot gunned his bike after it, kicking up loose gravel in a rooster tail. Tied to the back of his bike was a gunnysack for collecting rattlers. It too was flapping in the wind. In his hand, like a lance for jousting, was a pole with a wire loop on the tip. Tools of the trade. Tools that would net him the five-hundred-dollar first prize for the largest rattler.

The pole also had one other feature; it had a sharpened tip that made it perfect for spearing jackrabbits.

This one would make number fifty-seven. He was sure of the count because he put a notch on the pole after every kill.

Elliot pulled even with the tiring animal, swerving his bike, forcing the rabbit against the creek bank. The rabbit, trapped, turned wild eyes on his tormentor. It wheeled and started back the way it had come. Elliot anticipated the move, swung his bike around, pulled up even with the rabbit again.

"What's up, doc?" A laugh of pure exultation poured out of the teenager. He prodded the animal with his stick, drawing blood this time. "C'mon, sucker, don't you quit on me. Run!"

The jackrabbit put on a desperate burst of speed. Drew slightly ahead.

The bike stuttered, dropped back. A look of pure venomous hatred twisted Elliot's face. He rotated the accelerator back and forth, trying to clear the clogged carburetor. A cloud of black smoke spewed out and the bike stalled for a second.

"The rabbit's getting away," Timmy said, secretly glad.

Elliot geared down, popped the clutch. The bike lurched, almost started. More black smoke poured out.

Elliot looked like he was about to cry. The bike was losing speed. "C'mon, you piece of shit." He geared down more, popped the clutch again. The machine grunted as the engine caught, resumed its nasal whine.

"All right," Elliot said, elated. He patted the bike. "I knew you wouldn't let me down."

Elliot accelerated, standing the bike on its back wheel in a showboat maneuver. He again caught up with his quarry. "Looks like your luck has run out, fuzzball." He whacked the exhausted animal with the pole, trying to stir one last effort from it.

But the rabbit was all played out. It came to a halt, its sides quivering, eyes glazed.

Elliot rode past, swung around in a showy arc, throwing gravel high into the air. He let the bike idle while he wiped the sweat from his face. "Prepare to meet your doom at the hands of the red knight." He lowered the stick into jousting position, urged the bike forward. In his mind, Elliot was facing the black knight.

Timmy closed his eyes, pressed his face into his brother's back. He hated this part.

The rabbit seemed unimpressed by the honor accorded it.

The jack died impaled on the stick, kicking feebly, without a sound.

Wiping the blood from his stick, Elliot checked the sky. "We'd better get home," Timmy said. "Dad wants you to wash dishes tonight."

"Shut up." The sun was beginning to set, and that made Elliot a little nervous. Time was running out. He shouldn't have wasted so much time on the jackrabbit, but he had to admit he felt a whole lot better now, not angry anymore.

Killing something always soothed him.

Play time was over now; he had to shake a leg, because ten o'clock was the deadline for entering a snake in the contest. So far he had been unable to find that really big rattler, the one that would get him the down payment on that new Yamaha he'd had his eye on for the last two months.

There wouldn't be a chance of earning that kind of money for at least another year. He doubted the piece of skit between his legs would last that long. That meant he could end up walking, and the possibility of that kind of humiliation was too much to even think about.

That would be worse than what Louise Warrick had done to him back there at the snake pit. Whew! Man, she'd gone psycho. Good thing old Stuart had shown up.

Louise had humiliated him. There was only one punishment; no more thinking about her when he whacked off.

Then he imagined her sweaty breasts pressing against him. Well, maybe he was being a little hasty. A couple of days off would be enough punishment for her.

Elliot pushed the bike to greater speed, ignoring the large stones that littered the creek bed.

Life wasn't fair.

Every time he tried to liven things up a little around Crowder Flats, people got pissed.

He consoled himself with more fantasies of Louise Warrick's sweaty breasts, even though he had never felt a breast, sweaty or otherwise. He stopped watching where he was going and the bike hit some loose gravel, veered off course, plowed into a patch of larger rocks.

The rear end of the Kawasaki began hopping up and down like a jackrabbit with its ass on fire.

Elliot and Timmy went one way and the bike went the other.

They swapped ends several times, but Elliot never dropped the snake pole, even when he plowed up about ten feet of the creek bed with his face.

The bike coasted to a halt, fell over on its side. Timmy started crying over a bloody nose. One of his teeth, knocked loose by the impact, fell to the ground. A smile lit his face. "Lookit, Elliot, something for the tooth faggot."

"That's fairy, tooth fairy, you little retard."

"Dad said fairies are faggots," Timmy insisted.

"Okay, fine, you got something for the tooth faggot. If you don't shut up, you're gonna have something else for him." Elliot climbed to his feet, dusted himself off, and walked over to his fallen steed. He gave it a savage kick. Timmy did the same, copying his older brother. Elliot's MOTLEY CRUE T-shirt, which hadn't been in very good shape to start with, was reduced to tatters now. Ripping off a part of it, he dabbed at his bleeding face before giving it to Timmy.

He righted the bike and kick-started it back to stuttering life. Everything was jake, just a little more paint missing, just a little more skin. His looks didn't matter. No girl had ever looked at him anyway.

A triangular head peered at them from the bushes, tongue flickering in and out of a mouth white as cotton. A rattler but way too small for the contest. It coiled, its tail giving a familiar warning. "You want to bite something, shithead? Well, bite this." Elliot grinned, guided his bike across the snake's back, leaving it writhing in the dust, its spine broken.

Elliot was about to head back down the creek bed when Timmy tugged on his shirt. A flash had caught the five-year-old's eye. It was far away, whatever it was. The setting sun was reflecting off something shiny. Probably metal.

Gunning the bike, Elliot moved up the creek bank and tried to figure out where the flash had come from. After a moment, he did. The old Navajo burial ground.

"That place is scary," Timmy said. "Everybody says it's hunted."

"That's haunted. Shut up, will you, I'm trying to think." Elliot paused, picked some gravel out of his skin, and tried to decide if he wanted to go check it out or not. The old graveyard gave him a major case of the creeps, even if he wouldn't admit it to his younger brother. That big old white cross made him think about church, and that made him think about hell, which was where his grandfather said he was going if he didn't straighten up and fly right.

The wind made funny noises up there. It always sounded like somebody crying. He revved his engine. What had made that flash? Finally, curiosity won out. It could be something worth stealing.

As Elliot gazed toward the graveyard in the far distance, he saw the flash had been caused by a car. No, hold on. It was three cars. They were just sitting there all in a row, nose to ass, like elephants in a parade. They were just specks, too far away for him to identify them. Elliot held his ground, looking for signs of the owners.

After about ten minutes, he was convinced the place was deserted.

Jesus, this was really weird. There was no road leading out here, yet somebody had driven these cars out into the middle of nowhere and left them. Excitement grew in his stomach. Cars had stereos. Stereos could be ripped off. And sold. For cash.

Then there were tires, car seats, engine parts, and that was just to start.

He grew light-headed at the possibilities.

As he drifted closer, guided by the white cross that rose above the graveyard, he recognized two of the cars. One belonged to Bobby Roberts, the other to his dad, Chester, but the third was a BMW Elliot had never seen before. It wore silver paint and dusty Texas plates.

The teenager's hopes for quick riches diminished somewhat. "That's Bobby's car," Timmy said. "He'll cut off your balls if you touch it."

"Shut up." A fly settled on Elliot's face, crawled toward his still-bleeding chin. He waved it away.

This whole scene was getting weirder by the minute, all of the cars were chained together, bumper to bumper, and he could see that the white Caddy had towed the other two out here.

He climbed off his bike and listened, but he couldn't hear much. His ears were still ringing from the bike. Now that he had stopped moving, the heat was like a blast furnace. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead, trickled down, stinging the scrapes on his chin. More flies gathered on his face as he walked toward the cars. One crawled in his open mouth. He absentmindedly spat it out.

Rocks clattered beneath his feet. He stopped. What if someone was inside out of the cars? He scooped up a handful of small stones and fired a couple of them at Chester's Caddy. The sound was loud but nobody inside sat up. Nobody yelled at him.

He called out Bobby's name. No answer.

"Where is everybody?" Timmy asked. The distance ate his voice.

The sun dipped behind the mountains and suddenly it was ten degrees cooler, just like that. It never ceased to amaze Elliot how fast things could change out here. The evening breeze sprang up, began rocking the pines that surrounded the graveyard, causing them to creak. That was bad enough. But soon that weird crying noise would start up. He wanted to be gone before that happened. Long gone.

He started to kick his bike back to life.

Hesitated.

Elliot couldn't resist looking inside the cars. Just a quick peek. A chance like this might never come along again. He inched closer, still convinced someone was going to raise up and scare the crap out of him.

The BMW fascinated him and he knew he had to look inside it first. He had only seen pictures of cars like that.

Another rock bounced off the window brought no protest, so he opened the door. Strange exotic odors drifted from inside, new leather, shampooed carpet, freshly painted metal. These were odors that Elliot had only dreamed about in his most secret wet dreams. He had to climb inside.

The BMW smelled better than the girl's john at school and was clean enough to eat off the floorboard. It had a pair of fuzzy pink dice dangling from the rearview. One said DORA, the other me. He sat there staring at the gauges, trying to figure out their purpose. His hands caressed the steering wheel. If he had a car like this, the babes would be begging for mercy.

Reluctantly, he pulled himself from the BMW.

Chester's car was bourbon, cigars, sweaty sex. Elliot found some loose change, a half-pint bottle with an inch of Jim Beam in it. He put the change in his pocket, drank the Beam. "You tell the old man, you ain't coming with me again."

Bobby's car smelled like dust, cheap after-shave, and stale beer. There was another odor, hanging in the dry air, and it was one he couldn't quite identify. It smelled like perfume, but it seemed as if the perfume had been poured over something that didn't smell so good. He slapped at a fly buzzing around his face.

Man, the place was crawling with flies.

From where he stood, he saw lines of tracks leading to the graveyard and he realized someone had made several trips from the Caddy in front.

As though that person had moved something from the car. To the graveyard.

The sound of buzzing slowly seeped into his ringing ears and he looked around, trying to figure out where it was coming from. He didn't see anything at first. Now that the sun was doing its disappearing act behind the mountains, darkness was coming quick. He flipped on the bike's light and swept it around, feeling the first twinges of panic.

Timmy pointed.

At first Elliot didn't see anything, but the buzzing grew louder. Agitated.

The noise was coming from back by the fence.