Truck Stop (12 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY

Kat and Roger ducked into the long, cavernous building.

“This way,” Roger said.

They darted down the damp tunnel, squeezed past the massive brushes and into the forest of dangling shammies. The damp, cold strands of terry-coated rubber clung to their skin as they pushed their way through and out the other side.

Roger pressed back against the wall and pulled Kat close. They paused for a moment, catching their breath. Roger peered out through a narrow crack between the brushes and the shammies.

He could see Kincaid step out of the diner in the distance. He kept his shotgun poised and ready as he scanned the dark parking lot. After a moment, he lowered the shotgun. It was clear he didn’t know where Kat and Roger had gone.

Kat clung tightly to Roger as she whispered, “I can’t believe it…Kincaid. Him. He’s doing this. What’re we going to do now?”

“We can wait until he’s away from the diner, then we can circle back and get my car.” Roger gingerly touched the red burn marks on his chest from the defibrillator paddles and grimaced.

“Are you all right?”

“Seem to be,” Roger nodded.

“What happened? You stopped breathing.”

“That cop grabbed me. Didn’t want to let go.”

“Shit,” Kat exhaled.

“But I didn’t see Lilly anywhere. She must still be alive.”

It was true. He hadn’t seen Lilly, and that was a good thing. But Roger was trying to put an optimistic spin on it for Kat. Just because he hadn’t seen her didn’t mean that she wasn’t on the other side someplace. He had only gone to the junkyard, where he knew he would find the victim he had encountered before. He hadn’t had the chance to search for Lilly once he had seen the living-world Kincaid heading to the diner to kill them.

But Roger’s words did make Kat feel somewhat relieved, and she managed a small smile. “Thank God. that’s good. That’s very good.”

Roger peered back out the crack between the shammies and the brushes where he had seen Kincaid seconds before, but this time Kincaid was gone.

“Fuck.”

“What?”

“I don’t see him.” Roger anxiously adjusted his angle, trying to regain sight of Kincaid. It was useless. The parking lot was empty.

“Where the hell did he…?”

Roger gave up; he looked in the other direction, down the long truck wash tunnel. “We should probably keep moving.”

He took Kat’s hand, and they crept deeper down the tunnel, squeezing around the huge spindles of the secondary brushes. An eerie breeze picked up as they neared the other end of the truck wash. The bristles on the brushes behind them vibrated and rattled.

They stepped into the drying station, filled with hanging terry-cloth strips, and then moved to two massive, side-by-side spring-loaded rubber squeegees.

Roger grabbed the edge of the squeegee and pushed it aside. Kincaid was right there.

Kat screamed and recoiled. Roger let go of the squeegee, and it snapped back into Kincaid, knocking him off balance. His shotgun blasted wildly.

Roger grabbed Kat. “Here!”

He pulled her over to a side door and shouldered it open.

A gust of icy wind kicked up as they stumbled out of the truck wash. Roger’s eyes locked on the nearby repair garage. “Tools,” he said. “Tools make good weapons.”

They took off toward the garage with the hope of finding a way to defend themselves.

It was dark and cluttered, and it smelled of rancid engine grease. But there was something else that smelled, too. The unmistakable odor of road-kill. Kat coughed and clasped her hand to her nose.

“Over there.” Roger pointed to the tool bench at the back of the shadowy garage. They started toward it, carefully crossing around the deep rectangular repair bay pit in the floor. The floor was slippery with grease.

“Watch your step,” Roger warned Kat as he pushed through the dangling hoist chains that suspended a massive truck engine high overhead.

They reached the tool bench, and Roger grabbed a small hammer. Not big enough. He squinted in the darkness, felt around on the bench, and found a screwdriver. He tested the tip, then felt down the front of the bench and pulled open the drawer.

A low, sliding sound came from the shadows at the far end of the bench. Roger spun around. Something was on the ground moving toward him. Roger brandished the screwdriver.

“What is it?” Kat whispered, alarmed; she looked in the direction Roger was looking. But there was nothing there. “Roger?”

But Roger saw it all. A young girl emerged from the darkness. Her tank top was shredded by knife wounds; she clutched her severed legs in her hands as she dragged her torso along the garage floor, leaving a trail of blood.

Her desperate eyes met Roger’s. “He…he’s coming,” she pleaded.

A loud metallic clang came from the corner opposite her. Roger looked over and saw another woman; some of her hair had been ripped from her scalp. An oily crankshaft jutted out from her chest, and it banged against the concrete floor as she crawled desperately toward him.

“Get it out. Please. Get it out of me,” the impaled woman begged.

A third voice from beyond the air compressor caused Roger to spin again. This time he saw a blonde teenager with drill bits sunk deep into her eyes. She groped her way toward Roger as blood and bile oozed from the intestines that spilled from a deep gash in her bare torso. “I can’t see anything. Help me…please.”

Roger staggered back against the tool bench and closed his eyes tightly, trying to will away the horrific sights and sounds.

“Roger! Roger!” Kat grabbed him and pulled him around.

He opened his eyes and was met by Kat’s terrified face. He looked back at the shadows. The spirits were gone.

Roger took a deep breath and tried to slow his racing heart “We’re close…close to where he killed them.”

Roger knew there was no other explanation. There were too many of them, and the encounter had been too intense. Roger leaned back against the tool bench.

Kat rested her hand on his arm, concerned. “Are you going to be okay?” she asked.

Roger exhaled shakily, closed his eyes again.

“Roger, you’ve got to stay with me.”

“I will. I’m trying.”

He didn’t have a choice. He had to be okay.

Roger had experienced “hot” zones before, but never like this. Usually it was at an intersection where there had been a violent car accident, and once it had even been in a 7-11.

It had been several years ago, after a late-night gig, and he was exhausted. His guard was down, and when he was coming back from the cold case with a six-pack, he saw a smear of blood across the aisle. Seconds later he was surrounded by two small children. One had been shot in the head and the other in the chest. Their mother had the side of her face blown off. Roger learned later that the family had been caught in the cross fire from a robbery that had gone horribly wrong.

As horrific as that encounter had been, this was far more intense. He was seeing Kincaid’s victims in the moments of their death, and they had all died from some horrible kind of torture.

Roger opened his eyes again and turned back to the bench. He felt around inside the dark drawer and came up with a heavy pipe wrench. “Here,” he said to Kat.

“Shhhh.”

Roger turned in time to see Kincaid’s silhouette in the entrance to the garage.

Kat was already frozen, staring at the ominous sight. She gently pulled Roger back into the shadows and looked around. “There’s got to be another way out,” she said.

There was. The back door that Kincaid had come through earlier to get his shotgun. She turned back to Roger and whispered, “Come on.”

Kat steadied Roger as they crept over to the door and tried it. But it was now locked.

“Shit.”

Roger looked back at the garage entrance. Kincaid stepped inside, carefully scanning the darkness. There was an icy, determined expression on his face as he started forward, shotgun at the ready. Like a focused animal that knew it had cornered its prey. There was no way they could get past him and out that front door without him seeing them.

Kat tugged on Roger’s arm again. He looked back. She was pointing at one of the small storage room doors off in the corner. It would have to do.

They hurried over. Kat quietly tried the knob, and it opened.

Across the garage, Kincaid swept the barrel of the shotgun through the dangling engine-hoist chains, pushing them out of his way. He crept along the edge of the repair pit, keeping his eyes and ears carefully attuned to the darkness around him.

It was nearly black inside the small, narrow storage room when Roger quietly closed the door behind them. The only source of pale light came from a small, dirty window on the far side that had been papered over with yellowing newspaper. The acrid smell of road-kill was intense; Kat gagged and stifled a cough.

“The window,” Roger said as he felt his way across the narrow room.

Kat followed behind him, holding her hands outstretched in front of her. She was almost to the other side when her right hand brushed against something. She hesitated, lowered her hand, and felt the edge of a workbench. Feeling more certain now, she slid her hand along the edge of the bench, using it to guide her way. After several steps, her fingers hit something and she paused.

It was cold, wet and clay-like.

She squinted down into the pitch-blackness, trying to see. “Roger! Roger, something’s in here.”

Roger found his way to the small window. He reached up high, stretching as far as he could and managed to get a loose corner of the yellowing newspaper that covered it. He gave a yank, tearing away the dirt-covered windowpane.

Pale light streamed in, revealing the room for the first time.

They were in the middle of Kincaid’s “art gallery.”

It was a charnel house filled with strange sculptures made from human fingers, arms, toes, and teeth, welded together with engine parts. All of them were macabre, grisly fusions of man and machine. Roger remembered the sculpture he had seen Kincaid working on in the garage. Had someone’s body parts been destined to be part of that one, also?

Kat stumbled back, horrified, and in the process slammed into Kincaid’s current project—Lucinda. Her freshly dismantled body was strewn out on the workbench.

Kat opened her mouth to scream, but Roger slapped his hand over her mouth and pointed.

The shadow of Kincaid’s feet appeared on the other side of the crack at the bottom of the door.

Roger and Kat remained frozen as Kincaid’s shadow moved up to the door and paused. Kat’s terrified eyes were torn between the shadow under the door and the macabre gallery around her. What kind of thoughts ran through a mind like Kincaid’s? She struggled to find logic to his endeavors. A mechanic, yes. A man who worked with machines and engines. But the grafting of human flesh with cold steel?

Kat could understand the creative mind. The music she immersed herself in was often dark and disturbing. But music was art. A metaphor for some kind of emotion or experience, sometimes purely designed to elicit a reaction, which was in and of itself a valid reason to exist. But this was abomination around her. Was it the ultimate freedom of expression for Kincaid? The creative mind that dared to create with impunity? To will an abstract into reality, no matter what the cost? Or was it something born of a disconnect between what was living and what was machine? An inability to distinguish the machines he made come alive from the living people he used to do so? The corporal, mechanical, and functional human body equating itself intimately with man-made machines. How could you leap to such a thought? And disturbingly enough, what a free artist Kincaid truly must be to avoid any censorship, no matter what the cost.