The Suicide Motor Club (25 page)

The
Dead

CLAYTON WAITED IN THE VAN, A 1960 CHEVY STEP VAN. ITS OWNER, CHUY, A MEXICAN
American house painter, would not remember the nocturnal rapping at the trailer door that he answered with his double-barreled shotgun in hand, nor handing over this gun and car keys, nor going to the bedroom to fetch his visitor the half-full box of shells. He would not remember sitting obediently on the rickety kitchen chair with his chin up, like a man waiting for the barber to start his shave, nor would he understand why he woke up the next morning woozy and headachy, with an oil slick on the gravel drive where his van should have been. His wife, Consuelo, would not remember being ordered back to bed, nor understand why her pillowcase was soaked with spit. Only after they called the police to report the theft of the vehicle would Chuy notice the ten gold double eagle coins stacked neatly near his telephone. Judith had asked Clayton not to ruin anybody with his theft and had offered to pay him back for whatever he spent, should she survive. Clayton had agreed to this arrangement, but only because he wanted her tethered to the future by as many lines as possible. Her plan to deal with the monsters was as close to suicide as one could get without tying a noose around one's neck and stepping off a stool.

Clayton's role in the operation wasn't much less foolhardy, even with his ability to survive catastrophic injury and heal rapidly. He would almost certainly suffer catastrophic injury.

His signal to injure himself would be three flashes of a handheld flashlight half a mile away.

He watched the horizon all night.

It was nearly morning when things began to happen.

—

JUDITH SAT WITH A BLANKET AROUND HER, AS MUCH TO HIDE HER HABIT AS TO
keep the desert's cold night air from sapping her strength. She sat Indian-style behind a bush, a pair of binoculars from Clayton's pack in her lap. He also had a telescope, an old brass one, he said. He liked being able to see people before they saw him. The Camaro sat behind the shell of a junked and rusted Blue Bird school bus skirted with creosote bushes and allthorn, invisible from the road. Fear of death only nibbled at her—she was all but certain she was fulfilling God's plan and trusted that whatever awaited her on the other side would be just and right. That she might see Glendon again was too sweet a possibility for her to hope for, but she weakened and prayed for exactly that. Even if she was wrong and Clayton right—that the sky was only atmosphere and the cosmos steered itself rudderless through an endless night—the prospect of non-existence seemed, at worst, bitter and bracing. She thought of oblivion as black coffee, and wondered if the peace of not-being was in fact the heaven she and so many others had been promised. Her greater fear shamed her, and that was the fear of death's pain. For as much as she tried to think of death as a sort of birth, the thought of death by fire made her bladder feel loose. She intended to wreck the '67 Camaro, with its full gas tank and trunk full of gasoline in tin drums and glass jars, only as a
last resort, but if she went kamikaze, she didn't want whatever she ran into walking away after. She knew fire wasn't guaranteed in a wreck, however much gas was splashed around, but this car
moved
and she had every intention of mashing that gas pedal at her foe if it came to that. Also, she carried a Zippo in the pouch at her cincture; she did not know how many crash scenarios would leave her in any shape to operate a lighter, but she wanted the option to help the fire along if she found herself able to. Also, fire might be a fine incentive to make one of them tell her what happened to Glendon, should she find one trapped or hurt.

“Thy will be done, thy eternal will be done.”

You're talking to nothing

Shut up Clayton Birch

She had the Italian cross and the remaining bottles of holy water on the passenger seat and the gun on the floor—she should not touch the pistol while she wore the veil and scapular. She would be as close to holy and pure as she could.

The gun was just in case.

The gun might be for her.

Suicide was a mortal sin, but surely God would not want her turned into an abomination. Would he? Were these things part of creation, or were they aberrations created by evil? The latter made more sense, but she just didn't know. She knew nothing but that these five monsters had to die, and if she could not kill them all, she must destroy the one whose human name was Luther Nixon.

Just after midnight she saw a car with no lights on go by, but it was a station wagon—not their style—and it was too early. She felt in her bones, skin, and hair that this place just out of sight of Santa Estrella was the place to stop, that this would bring the fight to them with sunrise at their backs. Still, she had felt panic rise up in her at the thought
of driving, and so near where she had wrecked in '67. How much farther on was Clines Corners? Thirty miles? She shuddered and clutched the St. Christopher medal Clayton had given her and breathed deeply and slowly until the panic went away.

She dozed off shortly after three
A.M.

“I LOVE THIS SUMBITCH,” LUTHER SAID TO NECK BRACE. “I MEAN, I'VE LOVED CARS
before, I'm a car-lovin' man, but there's somethin' really sublime about this one. That's the word for it,
sublime
. You know that word?”

Neck Brace just looked forward.

Blinked once.

“Course you do. Sublime's what you get when you put art into something. Anybody can make a fast car these days, but hell. Drivin' this car's a little like fuckin'. Not that I get to do that much with ole ball-buster ridin' wingman, not that I'd trade him. Not the first ball-buster I known, either. Other one was from Georgia, too. Bottle blonde named Dolores. Stop me if I told you all this already. You not contributin' to the conversation and all, it's hard to form lastin' memories of our talks. It's a little like these crazy old women talkin' to their cats; bet a cat hears the same story three, four, five times, more if the biddy's getting senile. You're a little like a cat that way, no offense meant. Tell you honest, I kinda like ridin' with you, not only 'cause you're a wreckin' ball on wheels, but also 'cause you don't interrupt.”

Neck Brace looked forward.

Blinked once.

The road rushed under the wheels while the big engine purred,
though it would have taken a vampire to see that road. There wasn't much of a moon and the lights were off. Likewise the lights on the '69 COPO and F100 truck following behind in their infernal caravan. The F100 was the only reason they were going this slowly.

Doing eighty wasn't a chore for the Mustang.

It could have done eighty in its sleep.

Luther talked.

Luther liked to talk.

—

BACK IN '55 AFTER I BURNT UP THAT CARLISLE KID, I HAD JUST MOVED IN WITH
old Dolores. I hadn't never lived with no woman before or since, and that was the closest to married I ever want to come. You shoulda seen her the way I first seen her, standin' there at the Lakewood Speedway with her soda pop in her hand, that was '54, wearin' a red dress and everything. She later admitted she come fishin' for me, and damn if she didn't catch me. She had her hair all platinum blond, she called it ash blond, and I don't care who you are, you'd'a stumbled all over yourself for a chance to talk to her. I asked her why didn't she take a run at Penry Carlisle like every other head south of the Mason-Dixon, and know what she said? She said she already had him and he wasn't mean enough for her, and then she laughed so I never knew if she was funnin' me. She wasn't nothing but a kid, twenty years old. Too young for me then, I know, and the thing about a young woman twenty years old is she may have growed-up titties, although Dolores had kinda small titties, but the point is she don't know who she is yet and she's gonna find out on your dime. But you spend that dime every time. Even the way she talked was sexy, like thick honey pourin' out of her lips. She took her time talkin', gave you time to watch them lips. Thing is, that pretty little girl could drive, like no-shit drive. Just for fun I took her out on the clay track and let her run my '53 Corvette. Not that I was a Chevy man, never was, but somebody else was stakin' me just then. Stakin' me! Anyway, this girl just about creamed her
jeans when she vroom-vroomed that motor. She took us around that track like the devil, slammin' us both around and me sayin', “Don't wreck this rod, I don't own it!” but I was laughin' it as much as sayin' it, so she didn't take me serious. She didn't wreck it, though. I think she stayed with me as long as she did because I let her drive, and I stayed with her because she
could
drive, and too well for me to treat her like any other old piece of ass. But I did anyway. I shouldn't'a never cheated on her, but I cheated on everybody, so shoot me. Well, she didn't shoot me. Know what she did? Fucked the girl I cheated on her with, if you can fairly call that fuckin'. Seems like all them slit-kissers can do is what you and me do as a warm-up. Well, me at least. I can't picture you between nobody's legs, I think that face a' yours'd close a pussy tighter than one of them diver-killin' giant clams on the sea bed, no offense. Well, old Dolores must a' drove a tongue pretty good, 'cause that other girl never give me the time a' day again. And Dolores? She said she'd always love me but she wouldn't be my lover no more, she done found out who she really was and would I please pack my shit. I thought about the way Mitch Lily woulda handled it up on the mountain. I thought about choking her little ass right then. But even if I thought I coulda beat the rap, which I couldn'ta, and even if I was sure I wasn't too drunk to keep her from wriggling out and shootin' me, which I wasn't sure, I couldn't do it. I genuine loved her. And part of her held me in contempt for not doin' it. Killin' her, I mean. Thing is, I did kill her. Later. 'Cause after I turned I didn't want to see nobody from my former life ever again, 'cept her. Only her. Meant to just talk to her but drank her dry. And she fought and cursed me the whole way down for it, and I had the feelin' she hated me for takin' her life from her just when she was figurin' out how to enjoy it, but also she loved me for bein' strong enough to do that. Which is fucked up, but that's why we ain't in the Garden of Eden no more. And the angel with the fiery sword ain't ever lettin' us back in.

WHEN JUDITH WOKE UP, SHE COULDN'T REMEMBER HER DREAM, NOR WHERE SHE
was. When she looked at her watch it said five
A.M.
and she shook it as if that might change the verdict of the hands. She broke out in a cold sweat despite the deep chill in the air. She and Clayton had agreed that one flash of the light would be a “check-in,” to be answered by the other. Two flashes meant
come here
. Three meant go. She pointed her flashlight west and flashed her light once. He flashed back.

He must be getting anxious about the time. He had told her about an abandoned train car he had scouted out one exit east and two miles south on a little dirt path called Bethany Road. He didn't trust staying one day at a hotel, let alone two, what with nosy owners and curious maids. He said he had found a large tool locker in the van and set this up in the train car like a tiny coffin.

“You'd be surprised what we can fit into,” he'd told her. Luther Nixon had set such a poor example that she scanned his comment for double entendre, pleased at first to find none, then ashamed of herself for thinking that way.

She peered east. First light bled into the sky, turning its eastern lip from star-shot pitch to the color of a dirty coin. A waning crescent moon rose yellow and murky a straight-arm hands' length up from the horizon.

“Major Nelson, this is mission control,” she said, though she could not bring herself to finish.

Do you see the moon?

That was when she saw the needle of fire.

A shooting star over the desert, south of her.

Thou art with me Thou art

It was close enough she thought she heard its hiss and crackle, but this sound soon morphed into a metallic purr as she heard the sound of engines. Big ones. Moving fast. Getting closer.

She saw no headlights.

Her heart hammered in her chest.

Her palm was so moist she nearly dropped the flashlight.

A muted flash of dark metal shot by her, its big engine growling.

A darker car followed.

At a distance, a big pickup truck.

She broke cover and ran for the menacing black sports car where it crouched behind the husk of the bus. She ran so fast and with such pure intent that she almost forgot to use the flashlight.

Almost.

—

CLAYTON SAT BEHIND THE WHEEL OF THE VAN COGITATING.

Judith had just shone the light once, and he had been terrified two more signals would follow. He was relieved when they did not, gladly flashing her back as they had agreed.

To say that he was having second thoughts would have been insufficient. He was close to outright mutiny. He was actively imagining driving off, just leaving this sad, beautiful madwoman to her martyrdom and taking Chuy's van south to Mexico before word of its theft got to the border. If he survived the action he was supposed to take, there was a significant chance the others would kill him in the aftermath.
He did not have Judith's faith in her ability to deal with one vampire, let alone five, although he had once seen a priest's handiwork against the undead and understood there might be something to it. But then he had also known a woman who called herself a witch and did remarkable things, things he could not explain scientifically.

To him, there was little to choose between spells and prayer, between magic and divine assistance.

Perhaps it's a matter of will,
he thought.

Perhaps some individuals cause things to happen, and whether they call it witchcraft or prayer matters little. If, for example, I saw a shooting star a moment after thinking of one, is it some communication with the divine? Or is it that time is less ordered than we think? Perhaps I knew about the event because I would witness it at some point in my continuum and my awareness somehow skipped, like a record on its track? All of this philosophy is well and good, but I have a very real decision to make about whether I am to carry forward with my quixotic mission.

“I'm going,” he told no one. “I will not murder myself for a . . . doomed infatuation. One that I will scarce remember three feedings from now.”

He turned the keys in the ignition switch, heard the tired rumble of the Chevy's engine—Chuy had put almost two hundred thousand miles on it. He put his foot on the brake and he was just about to put the big van into gear.

That was when he saw it.

“My shooting star,” he said. A smile broke across his face. “Something remarkable has just happened.” He shut the van off and sat amazed.

In the distance, he saw the flashlight flash once.

Even though he heard the engines, his mind had been so preoccupied with the falling star that he had not processed their significance.
He prepared to flash once in response to her, as he had done a few minutes before, but then his thumb froze on the switch.

She flashed two more times.

Now the sound of the powerful engines and the absence of headlights registered with him. He moved fast. Clayton peered down I-40 and saw them. Only a vampire or a night bird would have seen them, but he did.

Luther and the others driving dark and fast as if they might outrun the sun's true rising still nearly an hour hence. He started the van's engine again. It stalled but then caught the second time. He put the van in gear and trundled it out toward the highway from its side of the rise that mostly concealed it.

The time was 5:02
A.M.