The Suicide Motor Club (28 page)

NECK BRACE WAS THE FIRST TO REGAIN HIS FEET.

He saw the nun lying prone and moved toward her, but Clayton crawled in front of her and bared his teeth. Neck Brace, too weak to fight, looked to Luther to see what he should do. His mouth hung open in an idiot's gape when he saw what remained of Luther. He shambled to him and gathered him up like firewood, picking up one limb he might have to hold next to Luther's trunk if he was too weak to regenerate. He loped into the dying night, off the road but following the interstate west.

Exhausted from the effort of dragging himself, Clayton lost consciousness at just the moment Judith woke. She looked around for Luther. She saw a limping figure silhouetted against the eastern sky but noted it was too tall to be Luther. Damaged and mutable as it was, it looked almost like an El Greco character stamped out of pitch and held up against the cobalt and lavender of first light. It stopped and picked something up from the pavement, folded it into its pocket, then loped away.

Rob

How'd you know my name

That his name too

This was the one who grabbed Glendon's arm as he innocently planed it on the warm desert air that evening so recently, and so very long ago.

This was the one who pulled her screaming child out of her grip and into the death car—the one against whom she had lost the most important contest she would ever face.

As a novice in the service of God, she should go after Luther Nixon, the most dangerous one, the most canny and cruel. The leader.

But deep in her heart and her womb she wanted to watch the tall one die.

If it could only be one of them, she would take this one.

Rob, then.

You still his mommy with all that ridiculous shit on?

I don't know.

I don't.

She stripped off the veil, coif, and scapular so that she stood in her jeans, T-shirt, and combat boots. She ran as best she could back to where she remembered throwing the gun.

—

THE DRIVER OF A BLUE '68 FALCON HAD STOPPED AT THE SITE OF THE WRECK TO
offer assistance. His name was Bennett Evans, and he was a thirty-four-year-old air traffic controller on his way back to Albuquerque from the home of a recently divorced Amarillo nurse. Bennett himself had lost his wife two years ago and loved the nurse with colors his marriage had been blind to. He had resisted the temptation to keep driving past the disaster, which had engulfed several cars in flames and cratered the south shoulder of the highway, despite his thirty-six hours without anything resembling sleep. The huge, pale man with the neck brace carrying his dead friend had roused such pathos in him there had been no question of driving on. When he pulled over and leaned to
push his passenger door open, the big ruin of a man had dumped the small ruin of a man into the seat without a word.

“Get in the back, buddy, I'll take you both to a hospital. What happened?”

The big man stumble-ran around the Falcon's front. When he reappeared at the driver's-side window, Bennett smelled rot and gas and something unpleasantly insectile.

“Is there anybody else hurt?” he said.

The big man ignored this. He put his hand to his mouth and then moved it forward, as if blowing Bennett a kiss, but his red lips had not puckered.

Bennett recognized this as
Thank you
in sign language.

Two things happened simultaneously. The big man drew back his arm, as if about to slap a bug against a wall, and the driver gestured in ASL.

He signed
You're welcome
back at the big man, whose eyes sparkled with sudden joy at finding someone he could speak to, then clouded over as he remembered the unfortunate circumstances they found themselves in. He grabbed Bennett by the shirt and wrenched him slowly but irresistibly out of the car, but then pushed him down on the ground almost gently.

“The fuck're you doin?” the bald, half-flayed corpse in the passenger seat croaked. “We need that blood, we're dyin'.”

The big man kissed at the tips of his fingers, then waved.

Good-bye.

Bennett watched his Falcon recede west as sirens sounded in the east.

He couldn't help thinking that his deaf sister had just saved his life.

—

5:40
A.M.

The stars were gone now, the moon a chip of white ice melting in the east. A very small town crouched close to the terra-cotta ground
not half a mile away, but it slept. The vampire known as Rob, not healed yet but getting a little stronger with each step, steered for an isolated house set well back from the highway. A rooster crowed in its yard beneath a rusty windmill barely turning in the scant breeze. He was aware of the woman behind him. When he got into shade he would make her wish she had not followed him, or at least that was what he told himself to push down other, less optimistic thoughts. He just barely managed to believe himself thanks to a sophisticated formula in which he subtracted the habit from the nun who had decimated them and arrived at the lesser sum of the ordinarily dressed woman stalking him. He had seen the pistol at one point when she had gotten close, but he didn't fear it. Truth was, he was mostly just
tired
of getting shot. He still hurt from the shotgun blast he'd absorbed at the wreck. The tattooed man at the Missouri hotel had given him quite a headache with a pistol, but that had passed. He wondered what happened to that pistol, correctly guessed that it was the very one the nun was holding. Anyway, he had put distance between them since. He had hoped to get some speed back while it was still dark enough to hide him, but that prick Boston vampire had drained him, made him weaker. It was taking longer. He wasn't fully himself.

When she did catch up with him, he had a surprise to show her. Near the wreck of the truck, not far from the busted sign warning
Explosives in use, Risk of death!
he had seen a spill of papers from the file cabinet the old geezer had in Florida. Documents, handwritten notes, photographs, some of them burning. One of the photographs, lying faceup near a monkey's tail of fire, had caught his attention. When he saw what it was, he barked out a laugh despite the danger he found himself in. He folded it and put it away just in case.

Rob glanced behind him to see where the woman was. Still hundreds of yards behind him, stalking toward him. He could outrun her easily now that he felt stronger, but he needed shelter. The sun was close.

Now a big dog on a rope barked at him.

He had maybe ten minutes until the sun came up.

The house had few windows, so he approached at a blind angle.

He yipped a few times, gaining speed.

He ran to the dog, still yipping, the chickens scattering before him. When he got close, the dog gave up barking and ran up against the house to whimper and growl, jerking at the limit of his tether. Rob followed it there. The fight was brief but loud. The big dog hurt him more than it might have, but even at half strength Rob was just too strong and cold-blooded.

“Jupiter?” a voice said. “Jupiter, you get another coyote?”

The radio was on inside, playing country.

Now he took the limp dog up, a big, mostly black shepherd mix. His hand hurt where the dog had almost severed two fingers; they were already knitting on again, but slower than normal.

“Shit! Ow, damn it! Go on, git out of here!” Rob said, yipping again, kicking up dirt, and then he said, “Oh no.”

“What? Who is it?” the voice from before said. An elderly voice.

“Mister, your dog's hurt.”

Now he stepped into sight of a window, expecting to see a face there. No face appeared.

“Jupiter?”

“Coyotes got him, a whole pack of 'em.”

“No.”

“I think he's dead.”

“No.”

“Let me bring him in,” Rob said.

Still no face at the window.

A sad, granular voice said, “Put him on the table.”

Rob grinned and, invited, went into the cool darkness of the house.

A man stood at the far end of the open house, his face contorted with pain and wariness. He knew something was wrong.

Rob put the dog on a short, uneven table that looked like it belonged in a school and crossed to the man. He looked into his eyes, saw filmy white cataracts.

“Who . . .” the old man started to say. “That didn't sound like no coyotes.”

“Just relax and don't talk,” Rob said. “Hold still.” The charm was harder without eye contact. Harder still with the sun so close, and him so weak, but at last it took. He bit punctures in the old man's tough neck and drank. The old man made little retching hitches in his stomach and grabbed weak fistfuls of Rob's shirt but didn't say anything. Rob felt better with the warm blood in his stomach, and a good thing, too.

She was coming.

He felt the sun crown outside, felt himself get wobbly.

The rooster crowed again.

“Just sit down and don't get up again,” he told the blind, moist-lipped old man.

“Jupiter,” the man said. “You kilt Jupiter.”

“Yep. Kill you, too, in a bit. Got a gun in here?”

“Nuh.”

“Oh, right. Blind. Got a big knife?”

“Drawer,” the old man slurred.

Dock Boggs sang on the radio. Rob turned it up. Then he got a big knife.

He wanted to check on the woman, but the light outside would be misery and he had no sunglasses; he'd lost them in the wreck. He plucked up a deflated-looking straw cowboy hat from a shelf by the door. He put this over his face to make a sort of screen for his eyes.
He peeked out the window. In the blaze of early, orangey sun, filtered to an agonizing pointillism by the hat, he saw her silhouette. She walked around the house to where he couldn't see, holding the gun. Rob sank back into the shadows and waited.

“Jupiter,” the old man said.

Rob expected her to come in the door or window at any moment, but she didn't. Finally, he saw her peek in quickly, then move away.

“Come on in,” he yelled at her. “We're just listening to the radio.”

She didn't say anything.

Nothing happened for several very long minutes.

“The fuck's she doing?” Rob asked nobody.

Nobody answered.

Several more minutes passed, the light outside getting stronger and hotter.

“I'm gonna die,” he said.

“Yuh,” said the old blind man in the chair.

The charmed couldn't help what they said and Rob knew that, but the truth of that one syllable made Rob angry. His hand flashed like the head of a striking snake.

—

JUDITH SAT IN THE YELLOW GRASS IN THE HOUSE'S BLIND SPOT, WATCHING HER
shadow grow shorter and the ground around it grow brighter. The vampire inside had called out to her, but her ears were ringing so badly from the explosion she couldn't make out what he had said.

It didn't matter what he said.

She had stolen a glimpse inside, seen an old man with blood on his shirt sitting in a chair, looking stoned. She saw emergency vehicles and tow trucks heading east on the interstate; the wrecks were only a mile or so away. Two plumes of smoke rose up from that direction, though she had to crane her head behind her to see.

The vampire said something else.

She wanted this done before police came looking for witnesses to the explosion and fire.

How long until then? Half an hour.

Every minute she sat here, she got a little stronger.

Ten more minutes, give or take, and she would act.

She looked at her belly, where she had been shot, but all she saw was a shallow purple pit, like a scar. As if she had been shot and healed from it years ago.

A miracle.

She tried to pray but she was out of words, so she sat silently, hoping that was a kind of prayer, too.

She looked at the gun.

She had the impression that she was on her own this time, that she was no longer God's instrument.

Which might mean God was hunting on his own, too.

It was 6:10
A.M.

A WOODEN INDIAN STOOD OUTSIDE THE WAGON HORSE GROCERY AND FILLING STATION
, but it wasn't the usual cigar store statuary, a mock-noble chief with a dour frown and a feather bonnet, one hand up to cover his eyes as he scanned the horizon for buffalo or long-knife cavalry. This was a brave, not a chief, and he stood not in calm observation but in the middle of battle. One hand clenched in a fist before him, while the other held a tomahawk high over his head, prepared to bring it down on the crown of a hapless enemy. His eyes were painted so the whites were prominent. An astute observer would guess the artist responsible for this figure was himself an Indian, and that observation would be correct. At 5:25
A.M.
, Daniel Otter Shirt sat in his wheelchair, his body a withered counterpoint to the athletic brave he himself had carved in 1943, shortly before going into the army. His nephews John and Sam ran the shop now. If his body was withered, his eyes were still sharp, and they locked on the Ford Falcon that raced to a diagonal stop in the parking lot, and on the two vile-looking men who got out.

—

LUTHER NIXON WAS WALKING, BUT HE WAS MILES FROM WELL. NECK BRACE WAS
in better shape, but not by much. The two of them staggered past the
old cripple and flung open the door leading into the small grocery store looking as though they had crawled off a battlefield, tracking blood and motor oil on their shoes.

“Hey, we're not open till six. You guys okay?” the young Native American man said, just pouring ground coffee into the coffeemaker.

“Yeah, Cochise, we're great,” Luther said. “We're fixin' to run the decathlon. Now tell me where there's a good dark house or a cave nearby.”

Luther stared into his eyes while he said this.

“Excuse me?”

“I said tell me where there's a dark place I can hole up, and pronto, Tonto.”

The young man broke eye contact with Luther, looked at Neck Brace, and then saw his uncle Daniel wheeling in through the door.

“Shit,” Luther said, seeing the charm wasn't taking.

Neck Brace pointed back out at the car, then tucked one hand in the other, meaning
trunk
, as in
Let's drive somewhere quiet and crawl into the trunk
.

“No time,” Luther said, taking a shaky step forward, grabbing Sam Otter Shirt's chin and jaw.

His grip wasn't very strong yet. It would never be very strong again.

“Now tell me . . .” was as far as Luther got before the fit young man ducked out of his grasp and punched him in the nose. Luther dropped. Neck Brace charged at Sam, knocking over a shelf full of Pez dispensers, PayDay bars, and circus peanuts, but tripped over Luther and fell. He got back up fast, but Sam already had the baseball bat he kept under the counter but had never swung at anyone before.

“Hey!” Sam said, showing him he meant to use the bat, but Neck Brace lumbered toward him. Sam cracked him in the head. Normally the big monster would have shaken this off, but at nearly daybreak
after suffering a car wreck and an explosion, he felt his knees buckle. Blood from his scalp trickled to the ground.

Sam immediately felt bad for whacking a guy with a spine condition, even if he was going apeshit in the store. But then his uncle Daniel spoke up in the slurred voice he'd used since the stroke.

“Keep hitting them.”

—

LUTHER CAME TO TEN MINUTES LATER, SURPRISED TO FIND HIS ARMS OVER HIS
head. He tried to move them and couldn't. Likewise his feet. He started laughing when he realized he was actually tied to train tracks, like the damsel in some silent Mountie movie from when he was a kid. He lifted his head up and saw his feet, bound with stout rope. He cranked his head to the side and backward till he saw Neck Brace's woolly hair. They were tied head to head on some old abandoned railway.

He felt nauseated from all the light—there was a dangerous amount of light in the sky. The sun was going to crown at any moment, and when it did it would crown right. Over. There.

Just past the two Indians, one sitting strokey-faced in a wheelchair, the other smoking a cigarette and squatting over a bloody baseball bat.

The back of the store was just to his right.

Come to think of it, the Wagon Horse Grocery did look kind of like an old railway station.

The young Indian spoke.

“My uncle says you're vampires. That true?”

“Well, I'd rather show you than tell you,” Luther said, trying to squeeze together the bones of his wrists and ankles to slither them out of the ropes, but it wasn't working. He tried to break the ropes with the strength of his arms, but he had no strength in his arms.

“Samson with a fuckin' haircut, huh?” he said, but it didn't sound
so funny with the big, burning sun just raring to come over that ridge and kill him. It occurred to him that he very well might be about to die for real and ever.

“Hey, dummy,” he said to Neck Brace, “get up and do somethin', for fuck sake.”

“My uncle says he's seen you before. Ten years ago. He says you beat my dad in the head with a soup can.”

“Mighta, I don't know.”

“You
don't know
? You do this kind of thing so much you don't remember?”

“Vampires,” the old man said in a small, dry voice.

“We ain't vampires. Ain't no such thing.”

“I don't believe in vampires,” Sam said. “But I do believe in assholes. My dad was never right again after the robbery, if you want to call it a robbery. All you stole was gas. You could have just drove off. Why are you such an asshole?”

“I don't know. Why're you such an injun?”

“That's an asshole thing to say. I'm not an ‘injun.' I'm Comanche.”

“Comanche's just a kinda injun. That's like sayin', ‘I ain't a bee, I'm a
bumble
bee.'”

“Bumblebee
is
different.”

“How's that?”

“Honeybee stings you once and dies. Bumblebee's like a wasp. Can just keep stinging. You're not that bright, are you?”

“Fuck you, teepee nigger.”

“Nope, not that bright at all.”

“So, what, you're just gonna kill us?”

“Nope.”

“You leave us here, you're killin' us.”

“Not if you're just an asshole.”

“Let me up.”

“Not yet.”

“When?”

“After we watch the sun rise. I think it's already up, but there's a low cloud. Should be over that in a minute. If you're okay then, I'll call the police and an ambulance. You could use both. Anyway,
they'll
untie you, not me.”

“Look at me.”

“No.”

“How about you, old fucker? Why don't you look me in the eye?”

The old man mumbled something.

The young man passed him his cigarette and the old man took a drag.

“What'd he say?” Luther said.

“He says he doesn't look in the eyes of people who have no soul.”

“Yeah, well. How about you let me up and I send you some money. Like, a lot of money. We got it hid all over.”

The young man didn't talk.

“Anyway, Comanche? What the fuck're you doin' out here? Thought you was all in Kansas somewhere.”

“Oklahoma. We left the rez. Dad married Pueblo.”

“That's real sweet. Now how about you FUCKING UNTIE ME.”

“Nope.”

“It's comin'. It's fuckin' comin' for real now. I ain't supposed to die out here. With
him
. I don't even know this dummy sumbitch's name, he just showed up one night. Untie me, you squaw motherfucker. Or I'll gut you. Your cunt Pueblo whore mother, too.”

“You were right, Uncle Dan.”

“I'll kill you. I'll eat your fuckin' . . . I'll kill . . .”

“No soul at all.”

Luther dropped what little charm he had left and Sam and Daniel
Otter Shirt saw him as he was, with his fangs and his veins and his bad skin.

He started retching.

5:50
A.M.

The sun crested over a saddle of clouds.

Yellow sunlight hit Luther on his left side.

Luther didn't talk anymore.

Luther screamed.

And Luther burned.

Together with the one he called Neck Brace.

Bright as magnesium.

Smoky as a grease fire.

And then they were gone.