Suckers (2 page)

His cheek throbbed in time with his bruised knuckles. Ray touched it, and he winced.

“Bad?” Ray asked.

“No. Well, like someone with a boxing mitt punched me in the face, but I’m okay.” Except for his heart racing at a hundred and eighty beats per minute.

“That was fucked up,” Ray said.

“Fucking bird or bat or something must have been drunk. Let’s get out of here?”

“Hey, I’m right with you.”

They took a few steps, and the sound came again—wings flapping, fast. They picked up their pace, Ray’s left boot coming down harder than his right. Adrenaline prickled Dan’s skin, made his stomach do the kind of flip you got when you crested a hill too fast. A
thud
hit off to his left. Ray stumbled forward with a grunt.

Dan spun, walking backward fast. “Are you all right?”

“What the
fuck
?” Ray looked over his shoulder, still moving. “Fucking thing dive-bombed my back.”

Dan turned back around. The alley outlet grew near, the street beyond deserted but wide open. He threw a look over his shoulder.

Nothing but alley.

Nothing but the clap of their footfalls.

Then the beat of wings.

The signal to move the fuck faster left his brain on a slow train to his legs. He ducked as the flapping overtook his hearing. The thing smacked into the back of his neck like a softball, pitching him forward. His hand opened in surprise, his hoodie spilling to the ground. His boots stumbled over broken asphalt. His knee connected hard with the ground.

He let out a sharp cry at a needle-prick of pain in his neck. He reached over his shoulders, trying to get a hand under the thing to protect his neck. Hot and rubbery and
writhing
—not the thing itself, but underneath its skin, like it was a coarse leather pouch dug from a hot riverbank and full of squirming things.

Ray’s shin banged his sides. His fingernails scraped Dan’s fingers as he scrabbled for purchase on the rubbery mass. Coated with something like sweat, the thing was slick and slippery, and Dan’s mouth flooded with saliva at its texture, the thought of it clinging to his skin.

The thin, sharp pain in his neck grew hot, like a needle sterilized in fire. He cried out again. His vision grained. The asphalt in front of his knees swelled and heaved. His stomach bucked, and everything he’d had to drink after the show shot back up.

Through the pounding in his eardrums, he heard Ray yell, felt Ray’s foot hard against his back. A surprised yelp followed, a confusion of feet over pavement. Wings flapped, and the needle pulled free of his neck.

Ray spilled to the ground behind him.

Clamping his hand against his nape, Dan looked upward, acid burning the back of his throat. The creature—whatever the fuck it was—grew small against the yellow-tinged night.

His fingers slipped in a warm slickness. Imagining blood, he clenched his teeth.

The thing pierced the underbelly of the clouds and disappeared.

Ray scuttled across the pavement. “Are you all right?” He grasped Dan’s wrist. “We’ve gotta get the fuck out of here. Are you okay?”

Am I okay? Can I move? I can’t move.
A dark spot swooped across the gray clouds behind his eyelids. His hand slipped a little. He clutched harder.

“We’ve got to get out of here.” Ray dragged him to his feet.

Once he discovered he
could
move, moving was easy. With Ray clutching a fistful of his shirt, they took off, their boots pounding the final twenty feet of alleyway. They spilled onto a wide, desolate street. Ray yanked him to the right, and there was their hotel, a yellow glow casting across the dark carpet beneath a blue-and-gold awning. Their boots slipped on the mat as they threw themselves at the door, hoping the damned thing wasn’t locked.

A cool blast of A/C stole Dan’s breath as he stumbled into the lobby. Far to the left was the front desk, elbow-high polished wood with a narrow alcove behind it for the desk clerks, none of who were present at the moment.

“Nice,” Ray said. He tugged Dan toward the elevators.

A thin, wet trickle licked the inside of Dan’s wrist. He squeezed his eyes shut as his footsteps sank into the lobby’s thick rug, letting Ray lead him by the elbow. He imagined blood oozing between his fingers. He didn’t want to look at how much. As Ray punched an elevator button, lightheadedness washed over him. He braced himself against the cool wall. “How bad is it?” he managed, his voice like a wire stretched between poles.

“It’ll be okay,” Ray said.

“Should we call an ambulance?” His face was clammy. The floors dinged off. His knees felt like hinges, about to fold.

“Do you need to go to the hospital?” Ray asked.

The door glided open.

“How bad is it?” He lifted his hand, turning so Ray could see.

Ray’s fingers, feather-light and a little raspy, sent a shiver down his spine. He wondered what Ray was seeing. How bad
was
it? His face went cold at the memory of that thing on him. Bile flooded the back of his throat. He swallowed it back.

“Did it get you?” Ray said.

“What?” He clamped his hand over his neck. “It fucking
bit
me.”

“All you’ve got back there is a mosquito bite.”

The elevator doors slid shut with them still standing outside it.

He felt the wetness with the tips of his fingers. “But I’m bleeding.”

Ray shook his head.

“Are you sure?” He let Ray look again, and Ray’s touch did it again—a light vibration going right through his vertebrae.

“I don’t see anything. It just looks like you’ve been scratching an itch. Which, if you got bit as much as I did while we were in Florida, is no fucking surprise.”

“I haven’t been scratching.” His insides churned again. He braced his shoulder against the wall. “It
bit
me.” He looked at his hand. Whatever was wet on it was colorless. He’d imagined a virtual glove of blood, dripping down his wrist, up his forearm. Instead, a tinge of pink colored the crook of his thumb.

“Your cheek’s bleeding a little.” Ray touched it, and Dan wanted to bat his hand away. That tingle again.

Movement from the lobby drew their eyes—the desk clerk, still on her goddamned cell phone. “I’m not bleeding,” he said, his voice flat.

“Your cheek is. Do you still want to go to the hospital?”

“There’s nothing back there?” He rubbed it.

“I didn’t see anything.”

“Holy shit.” He pressed the elevator button. If he didn’t have to go to the hospital, he wasn’t going to the hospital. Two things they didn’t need: news all over the internet about the bass player for Two Tons of Dirt getting attacked, and some doctor deciding to keep him around for testing. They were so fucking close to the end of this—the last thing he wanted was to come back for rescheduled dates. “That was
fucked up
,” he said.

Ray huffed a laugh.

“What the fuck was that out there?” Dan asked as they stepped into the elevator.

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

The doors slid closed. That felt safe. That felt good. They were in a box, solid walls on four sides, solid floor under his feet. A small box with no shadows for anything to hide in.

“What’d it look like?” he asked.

Ray held his hands apart. A small cat could fit between them. Jesus. The doors opened. Dan put a hand out to keep them open as Ray said, “I never felt anything like it. Fucking… I can’t even describe it.”

“You think it was a bat?” Dan said.

“Not any fucking bat I’ve seen. Man, it had a hold on you.”

“No shit.” He massaged his neck as they stepped out of the elevator.

“I’m surprised you
don’t
have marks,” Ray said. Which made Dan think of his hoodie, still out there on the ground. He should have been wearing it; maybe it would’ve saved his neck.

The hotel’s silent hallway felt safe. It felt real, and what had happened out there—out in the alley at the far side of the hotel—felt like something your subconscious dredged up as you fell off the edge of sleep.

His cheekbone stung. The knuckles he’d busted against the wall in the club earlier throbbed like a distant beat. And the nape of his neck felt…strange. Not tender, but something. He scratched it.

“You’re a mess,” Ray said, cocking a little smile at him as he ran his keycard through the door lock. The green light flashed. They spilled into the room. A couple lamps burned as if Ray hadn’t wanted to come back to darkness. Or, more likely, he hadn’t thought to switch them off when they’d left for the club.

“Let’s get you cleaned up.” Ray flipped on the bathroom light.

“Let’s get a drink,” Dan said.

“Raid the minibar?”

“If there was ever a time to pay six bucks for a bottle of beer.”

“How about we splurge on something harder?” He winced at himself in the mirror. His cheek had a split in it to match his knuckles.

“I’m not gonna argue with you,” Ray said from the other room, bottles rattling as he yanked the minibar’s door open.

Dan turned his shoulder toward the mirror and cranked his neck, one hand pulling at the collar of his t-shirt. His skin shone with the wetness the thing had left on him, but Ray was right—there was just a stray mosquito bite back there, barely a bump. He cranked on the faucet, his stomach turning at the thought of having that thing’s slobber on him. Grimacing, he grabbed the sliver of hotel soap and scrubbed all the way up his forearms.

Ray came through the door with a tiny bottle of Wild Turkey for him.

He bent over the sink and scrubbed his neck, pushing his wet hand under the collar of his shirt. He closed his eyes—
What a fucking night
—before cranking the faucets off. He straightened, water dribbling down the middle of his back, under his shirt. He took the Wild Turkey and threw it back, the burn rolling down his throat like fire, heat spreading like a hand through his belly.

What a fucking night
.

Ray cranked the water back on and took hold of Dan’s chin, turning it toward him. He dabbed his cheek with a wet facecloth, making Dan wince. Another dab, another flinch. Every time Dan’s eyelid jumped, Ray’s squinted in empathy.

He set the Wild Turkey on the sink by feel. His hands trembled. He jerked his face away from the washcloth. His chin tingled where Ray’s fingers had held it. He splashed his face. Gripped the tap and turned it back off. Blinked water from his lashes as he watched the last of it spin down the drain.

When he straightened, Ray had a dry towel for him.

He left a dab of blood from his cheek on it, a watery tinge of pink.

His fingers thrummed with the aftershock of adrenaline.

“That was some scary fucked-up shit,” Dan said.

“What about the others?”

Dan’s stomach tensed. Their crew was out there, probably as tempted as they were to walk it to the hotel. People they were responsible for. People they needed in one piece if they were going to finish this tour.

Dragging his phone out of his pocket, Ray said, “I’ll get a hold of Moss.” Of their crew, Moss was the Reliable One. Not to take anything away from Stick or Josh, because their drum tech knew his shit and Josh could work a merch table like nobody else, but when an
adult
was required…it fell on Moss.

Dan swept the empty bottle of Wild Turkey into the trash bin. He winced at his cheek in the mirror. Turning his head, he stretched his neck to see it, exploring with his fingers where he’d felt the stab of pain.

Ray was in the other room, his voice low and fast.

Dan came out of the bathroom to find Ray on the end of the bed clicking through TV channels: infomercials, late-late-night talk shows, public access, soft-core porn.

“No answer,” Ray said. “I left a voicemail. Looking for the news to see if there’s anything about other people being attacked. Here.” He handed Dan the remote and brought up the contacts on his phone again. Put the phone to his ear.

Dan clicked to another channel and landed on CNN. Nothing but talking heads and scrolling headlines about the Gaza Strip, the latest jobs report. A NASA flight engineer who’d killed her kids then taken her own life while she was in custody. Arson was suspected in the recent California fires. A bombing killed seventeen in the Balkans. Dan’s gaze moved to the window, its sheer curtains lit from the back by the street, the blackout drapes wide open. As Ray left a voicemail for someone else who might still be out there, Dan dragged the drapes shut. “Try Jamie,” he said, though that was probably useless.

“Just did.”

“Stick?”

“Pissed off at being woken up while you were in the bathroom.” Stick had been fighting a cold for the past week. No surprise he’d jumped on the opportunity to crawl into a bed.