Pearl looked at me and the left side of her face folded into a smile. “You think you’re man enough, you come and get it.” She held up the buckle for a moment, clenching it in her fist while she slid her kneesapart on the dock, then lifted her dress and shoved the buckle up between her legs. She spread her arms wide in an invitation. Judging from the look on her face, I’d say she liked hanging onto the buckle.
I didn’t know what to do. I sure as hell wasn’t going to go after it.
“I’ve listened to enough of your evil garbage,” Grandma said, biting off each word as if it tasted bad. Blood still dripped off her chin. “I may be a tired old woman, but I will kill you and your whole family if you so much as sneeze.”
I’d never been prouder of my grandmother.
Pearl hissed, “You just wait, you sad, leaking sack of meat. My boys? They’re gonna catch up to you. Someday, somehow, you’ll wish you’d never been born.”
I finally figured out Junior was gone.
One minute, all five of us had been grouped into a rough circle on the loading dock, and I could remember Junior at his mother’s side up until she pulled out the tooth necklace. But when I had lost it, trying to hit Pearl in the head, I realized that Junior hadn’t been there. He had vanished like smoke.
I brought the shovel back up, saying, “Grandma, he’s—”
Junior screamed, “Eat this!” from inside the kitchen. Thunder cracked across the loading dock, and blood exploded from Grandma’s chest and back. She was lifted off her feet and flung forward, shoulders rigid, knocking the walker into Pearl. I jerked my head around just in time to see a short bark of flame leap out of the darkness of the kitchen. That was it; that was what I had forgotten.
Ray’s Super Redhawk, lying on the dining room floor.
A wall of fire unfurled out at me. Searing heat washed over the loading dock, and the concussion followed an instant later, slamming into my chest, my head, snapping my bones. It felt like I’d been hit by a burning truck.
It was the gas.
When Junior had shoved me against the stove, the burst of airknocked out of my lungs had blown out the pilot. So the whole time we were out on the loading dock, the colorless natural gas had been silently filling the kitchen, the dining room, until Junior pulled the trigger on Ray’s revolver.
The initial wall of flame had blown itself out, and through the haze I caught a quick glimpse of Junior. He was on fire, stumbling toward the front door; the grease in his pompadour seemed to be especially flammable. I hoped it hurt bad enough he wished he was dead. I hoped he thought he had just been flung into hell. He threw himself at the front door, burst through it, and hurled himself into the water in a cloud of smoke and steam.
Grandma fell facedown on the dock, flattened by the impact of the gunshot and the wall of heat. Her right palm slapped the wood, then crumpled under her body as she slid forward. The .10 gauge slipped out of her grip, bounced once, and slid across the wet wood into Pearl’s hand.
Pearl landed hard on her bony hip at the edge of the Dumpster. The shotgun slid past my head, right into her good arm. She swung the heavy barrels around toward Grandma. “Shoot me?” she rasped. “I’ll eat your heart, you bitch, just chew it up and shit it out.”
I rolled onto my side, twisted, and kicked Pearl in the face with my right foot. It wasn’t much of a kick, but the impact snapped Pearl’s head back and the shotgun went off; her pointed chin popped up as the buckshot exploded into the flames in the kitchen. The force of my kick, combined with the heavy recoil from the .10 gauge, knocked Pearl’s upper torso back, and ever so slowly Pearl toppled and fell into the Dumpster headfirst. She held on to the shotgun all the way, refusing to let go even as the Dumpster water swallowed her head, shoulders, hips. Her sticklike legs followed, kicked once, then slid off the loading dock and disappeared into the thick, dark water. A few bubbles popped on the surface. The shotgun was gone.
“Please don’t be dead,” I whispered, scrambling to Grandma. She was lying on her stomach. A red cloud grew violently on her back, right between the shoulder blades.
“Oh no,” I whimpered and gently rolled Grandma over on her back. It was worse than I had feared. The bullet had left a crater the size of a coaster in her chest. I could see three, four inches down, into her chest, into her heart. Both of her eyes were closed. “Grandma,” I whispered into her rain-streaked face. “Grandma?”
She opened her eyes.
“Hang on, just hang on, okay?”
“He shot me, didn’t he.”
“Yeah, he shot you.” The air in my chest suddenly caught, and I found I couldn’t take a breath.
“The hell did he shoot me with?”
“A .480 caliber,” I said.
She exhaled ever so slowly and died.
CHAPTER 33
I rocked back on my knees and howled at the dark sky. A deep, heartrending hurt unfurled from somewhere in my chest and spread throughout my body like cancer. I kept howling, screaming, shrieking at the black, rain-filled clouds. Grandma was dead and I was ready to die too. To lie down, rest my face against the wet, cold wood, and drift off with Grandma, slip away to a quiet, numb place. A sound, like someone gasping for air, stopped me. I stared down at Grandma, hoping, praying that she was alive, fighting to draw air into her lungs. But Grandma hadn’t moved. Her eyes were still. The sound came again. I glanced over my shoulder.
Pearl was climbing out of the Dumpster.
Tiny worms hung from nearly every inch of exposed skin, as if she’d suddenly grown thick, squirming hair all over her face and shoulders. She flopped forward on her chest, wriggling her hips and kicking her legs, sliding onto the loading dock. I couldn’t move. With a grunt, she pushed herself to her feet, then looked at me. Actually, I wasn’t sure if she was looking at me or not because several fat worms hung out of her right eye socket. Still, she must have seen something, because she raised her good arm and pointed at me.
“Ooooooh,” she croaked. I realized that she was trying to say “You,” but when she opened her mouth, blood washed out over her bottom lip and her knife-edged chin. It looked like a dozen or so worms were eating her tongue. Part of her outstretched arm fell off. The muscle between the elbow and the back of the shoulder just fell free with a wet ripping sound and landed limp on the wood, hundreds of worms squirming through the fibrous meat.
Without a muscle to hold it up, her arm flopped back to her side.
She took a step forward.
More flesh started falling off, hitting the wood with soft plops. A couple of fingers. Part of her scalp. She took another step forward, and the jolt of her foot landing made more parts fall onto the dock. A giant chunk of her thigh. Her nose. Something that might have been part of an intestine slid out from under her dress and down the inside of her leg. The gold and diamond studded buckle fell from between what was left of her thighs. And all of her, everything down to the thin layer of skin covering the cartilage of her nose, was alive with worms, infested with them.
She shuffled a few more feet until I couldn’t take watching her anymore and simply placed my gloved hand in what was left of the exposed rib cage and pushed. It felt like shoving a stack of empty aluminum beer cans over. Pearl opened her mouth and four or five teeth tumbled out of gums that looked like Swiss cheese. Gurgling something, she fell back into the Dumpster. Her outstretched arm hit the opposite side and simply broke off, falling out into the floodwater, flinging clots of worms and meat into the air. Water filled her open mouth.