“At least you weren’t lunch.”
I started feeling light-headed and wondered if all the marijuana in the air was starting to affect me. I led her out of the building and the long way around town back to the car. We stuck to the dilapidated buildings beyond the compound and didn’t see anybody. Crazy Chuck was bound to be around. Little bastards like that didn’t just fade.
“Stay here,” I told her.
“Wait. Let me check your neck.” She tore off a piece of her halter and let those tits hang out against me and worked on trying to staunch the flow of blood. “Be careful.”
I got to the car and stood there for a second letting the sun pour over me. I scanned all the broken windows and rooftops and saw nobody. Then I raised the gun and put one through the windshield of the Mustang and said, “Hey Chuck, you want to get out of the back seat?”
It was just a guess but it worked. He opened the rear door and clambered out. He had Smiley’s meat cleaver in hand and leered through his beard and sort of fidgeted in the wind.
“You’re sweating now,” he said.
“Yeah well, it’s been a rough day.”
“It’s about to get worse for you.”
Rainbeaux moved out from behind the trough where she’d been hiding. She trained a 10-gauge on me and held it comfortably in the crook of her arm. She knew what she was doing. Goddamn it, never trust a chick whose name ends in ‘x.’
“And I thought we were friends,” I told her.
“Shut up. Drop the gun.”
I tossed it deep to my left, as far from Chuck as I could, so that the .32 bounced over the distant porch and skittered in the dust. If he went for it maybe I could make a run. I could get lucky and the shotgun spray might go wide.
“Move and I’ll blast your dick off,” Rainbeaux said.
I didn’t think that turning on my charming full-wattage smile was going to help me out here. “Sure,” I told her.
Chuck just stood there, jittering and brimming with so much unchecked energy that it bled out his eyes.
Third act finale.
I had nothing to lose so I asked, “You wanna tell me a little about what brought our relationship to this?”
Maybe he liked my attitude or maybe he just wanted to carve me up real slowly, but he stopped and took a deep breath and I knew I’d bought some time. Typical James Bond villain shit.
“Crops never did well in the area,” he told me, “but the community didn’t want to leave. Most of them were afraid that if we turned to the establishment for any kind of help we’d lose our freedom or be swallowed by conservatives. So we had to find another source of food.”
“I don’t suppose you considered just getting a job at Mickey D’s like everybody else.”
“Immensely poor grazing for miles around so the animals kept dying. We were forced to go to other towns and cities and raid their provisions. I didn’t want to be dependent on them forever. So an alternative was discovered.” So that was what he was calling it. “And how long has this been going on?”
“My father started it over thirty years ago.”
Son of a bitch. “Does he own a video chain in Malibu, too?”
“People like you locked him away long ago because he was a revolutionary.”
“I just bet. The rest of your clan doesn’t even know, do they? They don’t even know what you’re feeding them.”
“Some of them do. The most important members of our Family.”
Yes, I thought. The maniac cook would know. And Rainbeaux and perhaps a few others who’d have to act as bait out there on the highways. Catch the drivers in their broken-down cars and lead them off to their deaths.
Rainbeaux let out a low sexy chuckle that in other circumstances I would’ve enjoyed. She said, “I’m going to de-bone you myself.”
“Now you’re just being mean.”
She opened her mouth to answer but the only sound that dripped out was a small “erp.” She froze and her muscles locked so hard I heard her shoulders pop. The shotgun fell and went off, blasting the dirt.
Her hands trembled and drifted to her neck, but by the time they reached it Rainbeaux no longer had a head.
The decapitated body flopped in one direction and her pretty face tumbled in another. Behind her stood Mary, who didn’t look either pleased or disgusted by what she’d just done. She glanced at me and said, “Watch it.”
Chuck made a move for my .32. He was wiry and fast and chortled as he ran for it. All that wacky weed sure made these fuckers a goddamn giggly bunch.
For a short guy he had a loping gait. I tore ass and sprinted the twenty-five feet but the loss of blood was throwing me off. We got there at almost the same time, and he already had his hand on the gun.
I grabbed his wrist and was surprised at how strong the little bastard was. He nearly shrugged me off and we scuffled as the ghost town sighed and hissed and moaned around us. He knew some moves and worked at my ribs while I tried to get a hold of him. Skittering like a rat, Chuck could really slip and parry. He kicked the .32 aside and tried to swing the cleaver at me. I ducked aside and he chopped past my ear. I straight-armed him across his chest and the blade dropped. Chuck wheeled and went for the gun. I went for the cleaver.
This was it.
He spun and brought the .32 up towards my heart but he couldn’t pull the trigger. He stood there perfectly still, balanced on the balls of his feet and shivering slightly, with the cleaver bisecting his brain.
I’d slammed the blade down as hard as I could, and it had come to a stop directly between his eyes. He blinked once, and again, and the tip of his tongue jutted and flicked out across his bottom lip.
He was still standing when Mary and I got into the car. As I slowly drove off I kept looking in the rearview, waiting for him to drop, but he never did.
Almost an hour passed before either of us said anything.
“I lied before,” Mary told me. I tried not to be too distracted by her bare chest.
“About what?”
“I wasn’t a hitchhiker and they weren’t going to eat me. I was being punished.”
“Why?”
“For breaking the rules.”
“Which rules?”
“For saying I didn’t want to hurt your friend. I was hoping I could help him get his car started again and he could get me the hell out of here.”
It started to come together. “You were part of that Family. You were the bait.”
“Me and Rainbeaux. His car was dead though.”
“It was the fuel pump.”
“I’ve run away a couple of times but they always find me and bring me back. I’m sick of living out here, picking up stranded drivers and lost teenagers and turning them over to the Family. All this dust and those fuckin’ hippies playing the same damn songs on their guitars. You know they’re still protesting the Vietnam war. They don’t know any new tunes. They have nothing better to do.”
“Well, say goodbye to Masonville once and for all.”
She sat up straight as if I’d punched her in the belly. “Masonville?” She gave me an expression I couldn’t figure out, sad but sort of mocking too.
“It’s not Masonville. That sign at the start of town is all beat to crap. You misread it.”
“I did?”
“That’s Mansonville.”
Mansonville?
It stopped me. Chuck. Charles Jr. “You gotta be friggin’ kidding.”
Mary leaned back, beautiful and exquisite as we drove into the vanishing sun. She turned to look at me and my heart bucked again, and I thought this might work out all right. I’d met some of Monty’s backers and co-producers and I knew just what they were looking for.
“You ever wanted to be in pictures?” I asked.
Adam Pepper
HEN I JOINED the HWA, the website said, “Chapters active in New York, Chicago, Atlanta...” and I was excited by the prospects. Here I was, living in New York all my life, the literary hotbed of the world, and I hadn’t accomplished a thing. Sure, I’d sold a poem or two, a short here and there. But no one knew Adam Pepper. And just as important, Adam Pepper didn’t know anyone else.