Scary Out There (37 page)

“Are you warm enough, Zen?”

“Sure.” She wasn't, really, but she knew the heater was already up as high as it would go. The desert got hot, but at night, the temperature plunged. It was so cold out there she felt it breathing through the leaky edges around the passenger door. “I'm going to sleep.”

“Okay.” Her mom gave up the hunt for music with a sigh, turned off the static, and put a thin hand on Zenobia's leg, a silent affectionate pat of apology. Zen struggled to turn over on her side, but the seat was more spring than padding. She compromised somewhere in the middle, an awkward lean more than anything else, and wished like hell she didn't have all her music in the cloud, because she wanted to put her headphones in and drift away, just drift. . . .

“¡Mierda!”

Zenobia had just started to relax when her mother spat
the curse out and wrenched the wheel, and Zen lurched hard against the straps and bumped her elbow hard enough to see spots.
Ow.
The station wagon's tires screeched as it skidded, and the back end tried to fishtail, but somehow her mom got it under control as she applied the brakes, hard. Zenobia slid forward, yelped, and braced herself with her feet in the passenger well. No air bags in this clunker. They'd better not crash.

They didn't. Her mom brought the car safely to a stop, and the engine began making a strange, gargling sound, shaking like it was afraid. Zenobia struggled to sit up, but the belts and her reclined seat were holding her back. She fumbled for the lever and slammed the seat up, which only made the straps tighten more over her chest, and for a second she genuinely thought this stupid old car was going to kill her. She yanked on the shoulder strap and got it loosened enough to let her catch her breath.

“Stay here,” her mother said in a tense, focused voice. “I mean it, Zen. Stay here. Do
not
get out of the car.”

There was a wreck up ahead. They'd come up on it in the dark, and it had been amazing her mother had been able to stop in time; the car was on its side, undercarriage showing like the bottom of a dead turtle, and it looked crumpled and bashed all over. Must have rolled, Zenobia thought. There was no way to tell how long ago it had happened, but this wasn't Interstate 10, with steady traffic; they were on the so-called
scenic route
, which mainly meant lots and lots of desert and
nobody else in sight. According to the map, they were on Highway 18, heading for Highway 302, if they were going the right way, which was impossible to tell, and
oh God
there was somebody lying on the ground next to that car.

“Mom?” Zenobia hardly recognized her voice. It sounded like she was ten years old again. “Mom?” She pointed over the dash at the legs sticking out in the wash of the headlights. Blue jeans and sneakers. “Oh God, Mom—”

“
Stay here
.” Her mother got out of the station wagon, went to the back, and opened it up. She grabbed a backpack and slammed the station wagon's door with enough force to make the whole car shudder.

How long had this wreck been here? It had no lights, no headlights or taillights or anything. Was that person a woman? A dead woman?

Zenobia didn't get out of the car, but she rolled down her window so she could hear her mother. In case she needed anything.

“Ma'am?” her mom was saying as she knelt down next to the body. “Ma'am, can you hear me? My name is Dr. Mariana Gomez, and I'm going to help you, all right? Ma'am?”

That was her mother's calm, smooth, professional voice, and Zenobia watched as she bent down and did all the things that doctors did to check for life. She must not have found it, because she stopped talking, sat back, and looked over her shoulder at Zenobia. There was an unreadable look on her face.

“I'm going to check for any other passengers!” she called back, and Zen had to resist the urge to tell her
No, no, let's just go, let's get out of here
, because first of all it would be wrong, and second of all there was no way her mom would listen anyway.

Zenobia checked her phone for the millionth time. Still no signal. Where were they, on the fricking
moon
? “Come on!” she whispered, and shook it. That didn't help, but it made her feel better. Her mother was up and walking around the overturned car. “Come
on
!” She held it at arm's length out the window, and the glowing screen finally showed one tiny, faltering bar. “Mom! I've got a signal! I'm calling 911!”

She popped her door and got out of the car, because even though her mom had been very specific, surely she didn't mean
Don't call the cops
, because this needed calling in, and it was just a couple of steps, anyway.

God, it was dark out here, with just the stars and dim headlights; their glow looked fragile in all this darkness, and the silence seemed so big around the unsteady, shuddering idle of the car.

She dialed the emergency number and watched the bar anxiously. It flickered, strengthened to two, then dropped back to one again.

But the call went through.

“Yes?” The relief at hearing someone's voice was so intense that Zenobia gasped and felt a sting of tears in her eyes. Sure,
the voice was young, and weirdly enough sounded like she'd been laughing, but that didn't matter.

“Um, there's a car wreck, and somebody's hurt. We need help here.” She was lying, she realized—somebody wasn't hurt. Somebody was
dead
. “We're on Highway 18, I guess, between I-20 and 302?” She didn't hear any response. “Hello? Can you hear me?” She checked the bar. Still solid. She could hear the faint hiss of an open connection. It didn't feel right, though. Not right at all. “Hello?”

There was a strange metallic sound, like a scrape, and then a voice said, “Help. Help.” The drawn out words had a weird electronic sound to them, like Auto-Tune. It sounded like a girl, but somehow, it also didn't sound like a
person
.

Zenobia hung up the call and ran forward, around the front of the car. Her shadow, reflected on the undercarriage of the wreck, looked twisted and weird, and for the first time she saw the woman who was in the road—really
saw
her, and all the blood sprayed around her body.

The woman had been thrown out of the car, and there was no way she was alive. She hardly even looked human anymore. The car must have rolled over her.

“Mom!” That came out as a scream, a full, uncontrolled scream of terror, and she pressed her hands to her chest because her heart hurt with the slamming impact of the world going sick and wrong. Zenobia backed away from the dead woman—she was old, a white woman, with cloudy blue open eyes—and
ran around the front of the wrecked car. It was dark beyond the glow of the car headlights, and she fumbled with her phone and turned on the flashlight app. It wasn't very bright, but she saw her mom crouched down next to another body.

“Zen,” she said, and beckoned to her. She'd gloved up from her emergency kit, and her face looked tense and stark in the bluish flare. “Bring the light over here.”

“Mom, that woman—”

“Zenobia, I need you to focus, okay? Just stand there and hold the light.” Her mother got like this under pressure, focused and sharp and commanding, and Zen realized that she was kneeling next to another body. A man. He was still breathing, but she didn't think he would be doing that for long; he was all busted up, trickling blood onto the dark road, and he was breathing in slow, convulsive gasps. “Did you get the ambulance?”

“I—I tried. Mom.
Mom
. We need to go.”

“I can't leave him until an ambulance gets here, sweetheart. He needs a hospital if he's going to survive. Honey, if you're scared, reach in the bag, in the outside pocket, and get out the gun.”

“What?”

“There's a pistol in the outside pocket. I brought it for the trip. I want you to get it out and hold on to it. You know how to shoot. Your dad told me how good you were at the range.”

“You have a
gun
?” Of course she did, she'd just said that, and Zenobia held the phone out to keep the light shining as she fumbled in her mom's bag with her other hand, unzipping the outer pocket. There it was, a black automatic. “Is it loaded?”

“Yes. Safety's on.”

Zenobia thought she should have felt safer, holding the gun, but she didn't. Her hand was shaking. She felt like she'd forgotten everything she'd ever known, out here in the dark, and she didn't know how her mom was acting so
calm.

“Zenobia.” Her mom was watching her as she put pressure on the worst of the man's wounds, and incredibly, she
smiled.
“You've got this,
querida
. It's just for safety. We're fine. Everything's fine. The ambulance is coming. All right?”

“I don't think it is,” Zenobia said in a small voice.

“What?”

“I think—” She remembered the lazy pleasure in that voice on the phone, and shivered. Her fingers tingled from the chill. “I think I got somebody else.”

“That's not possible. You called 911, right?”

“Yeah. But—but it was wrong, Mom. Something's really wrong here. We should just
go
. This wasn't just a wreck, somebody . . . somebody
did this.
What if they're still here?”

Her mother started to answer, and as she drew in breath, the man whose chest she was tending made a sound like a wet, strangling cough, only it lasted longer than it should have, horribly longer, and then he stopped breathing.

“Damn.” Her mom checked the man's pulse and put her ear to his chest. She used her hand over his gaping mouth to check for breath. “He's gone. I can't do chest compressions—he had a wound too close to the heart. . . .”

“Mom! We need to
go
!” Zenobia was jittering back and forth, foot to foot, and the light from her phone was dancing all over the scene.

It caught on a pair of reflective eyes, and for a second she thought
coyote
, but it was taller.

It was on a level with her own height.

Her mother, stripping off her bloody gloves, said, “Zenobia, we're going to be fine, really. I know this is shocking for you but—”

Zenobia wasn't even breathing now. She watched those reflective eyes blink. She couldn't see the actual
person
, other than as a shadow, and she knew that people,
real
people, didn't have those kinds of eyes.

“Stay down, Mom,” she said. All her fear left, just drained out of her, and what was left was a warm, steady sense of concentration. Maybe she got it from her mother.

Focus.

She brought the gun up. Her dad had taught her proper shooting stance, and she slid her feet into place, braced her arm for the recoil, and aimed at the reflective eyes.

They blinked, and disappeared.

Her phone rang.

Her concentration broke, and as she fumbled for it, she almost dropped the device. Thank God her dad had also taught her proper trigger discipline, and she automatically took her index finger away as she lowered the gun, or she might have shot her own mother. Or herself. The screen caller ID said
911.
Zenobia pressed the button and raised the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

Just electronic hiss and then, softly, that same eerie electronic voice said, “Don't leave meeeeeee. . . .”

Zen shut off the call and shoved the phone in her pocket. “Mom,
come on
. We have to get out of here.”

Her mother didn't argue. She grabbed her bag, and the two of them moved around the wrecked car, back into the glow of the station wagon's headlights. . . .

And the car died before they got there, with a soft, apologetic cough and shudder. The lights faded out, leaving them in the cold glow of stars.

“Stop,” Zen said as her mom made a move for the car. “It didn't shut off all by itself.”

The phone rang again. Zenobia ignored it this time and concentrated on the dark around them. When the phone fell silent, she heard a whisper of blown dust hissing over the road, and then a profound silence.

“I know you're out there,” Zen said. “Come out.” She pulled her mom away from both cars, out to the center of the starlit road where she could see someone,
something
, coming.
Her mother was breathing fast now, and shaking, but she had gotten into her medical bag and was holding a scalpel now. “Come out! Are you scared?”

There was a rustle from the other side of the wrecked car, where the shadows were deepest, and she saw a flash of eyes. Lower to the ground this time, as if it was crouching, whatever it was.

“Don't leave me,” it whispered, and it was the same voice, weirdly processed, artificial, inhuman.

Zenobia aimed and fired, three tightly grouped shots right where the eyes were, but they were gone, and she didn't think she'd hit it. Whatever it was, it moved fast. And silently.

The roar of the shots seemed both enormous and oddly flat out here in this vast, empty place. She'd hit the wrecked car, for sure; she heard the falling tinkle of broken glass, probably from the windshield. But nothing else.

“We need to make it to the car,” her mother said. “Zen—”

Something flew out of the shadows by the wrecked car and rolled unevenly to a stop by Zen's boots. A faded red heart that her mother kept on the keychain.

It had taken the car keys.

What do we do?
Getting in the car was useless. It hadn't protected the two dead people on the road. Something out here in the dark had rolled their car into scrap metal until they came out.

Come on, come on, someone help us. . . .

There was a flickering light on the horizon. Moving toward them.