One of Us Page 11

  “It is nice. You just enjoying somebody’s company instead of asking for what you want a thousand times.”

  Bowie laughed. He lit a cigarette and flung the match out the window before chugging his last beer. If he had a mind to get her drunk, he was doing a terrible job of it. He’d drunk them all greedily. Then he blinked as if remembering something. He produced a steel hip flask from his back pocket.

  “What you got there?” she said.

  He tilted it back and wiped his mouth on his wrist. “Cider. It’s real sweet.”

  “You should take it easy with your drinking.”

  “You’re looking at a pro, honey. I can handle my liquor.”

  “I don’t want you drinking too much and thinking you can paw me.”

  He took another swig and screwed the cap back on. He frowned. “I thought we already covered that. You’re starting to make me feel like a real creep for liking you.”

  “I’m sitting here, ain’t I? That liquor you got. Is it like schnapps?”

  “I never had me no schnapps, darlin’.”

  “I never had me any sweet liquor.”

  “I only share it with my friends,” he said with a comical leer.

  “There you go again. Give it here.”

  Amy took a sip of it. The sweet alcohol flooded her brain and got her scalp crawling with itchy pleasure. She liked it better than the beer.

  “Give that back,” he said.

  “Nope.” She took a bigger sip. “Seeing as we’re friends now.”

  “This is why I don’t have many friends neither.”

  She handed it back. She didn’t want any more of it. The liquor made her feel a little fuzzy, and she didn’t want to come across as tipsy and encourage him. Mama lecturing in her head again.

  She opened the glove compartment, expecting to see a big gun or a giant sandwich bag filled with weed. Nothing but mix tapes. “You got a lot of music.”

  “I like to drive with a good song playing. I picked all that up on my travels.”

  “You talk so slow, you must be from Texas.”

  “Abilene, to be exact. I been to a mess of places. Small towns and cities. So much going on out there. They still know how to have fun in the cities.” He smiled at some old memory. “The punkers run around in monsta face, but otherwise folks just live their lives like the uglies never showed up. You ever been to the big city? Atlanta, maybe?”

  “I never been outside the county,” she said.

  “You should. It’s a big ol’ world.”

  “I’m happy right here. Might could visit, though, someday.”

  “Say the word, and I’ll take you there. You could see it all.”

  Amy smiled as she pictured it. Taking off who knows where. Going any old place just to see what happened, free as a bird.

  Instead, she had to be getting home, though she didn’t want to leave, not yet. Bowie had grown on her. She even found him kind of attractive with his wiry build and interesting ideas. He and Jake were alike in some respects, but Bowie was a man who knew what was what. He roamed the world as he wished. Nobody cuffed his ears for stirring up trouble over plague kids. Nothing held him back. He was free. He did what he wanted and didn’t care what anybody thought of him.

  She wondered what it would be like to kiss a man like that.

  Her brain grew even fuzzier. Static in her vision. “Hey.”

  “Hey, what?”

  “I don’t feel so good all of a sudden.”

  “You’ll be all right,” he said.

  Her vision clouded and grew dark around the edges. The twilight deepened. Stars flared in her eye. They popped out of their sockets, falling on the world.

  Streaming like rebel angels.

  “Want to go home,” she said just before his mouth closed over hers.

  Eighteen

  Let’s be nice,” he breathed against her cheek.

  One of his hands was groping under her shirt and bra.

  “What’s this?” Amy said. “What are you doing?”

  His head plunged to her breast and took as much of her into his mouth as he could. A quirt of pain shot through her chest.

  “Wait,” she said.

  Her jeans were balled around her ankles. Her behind slid on the seat as his fingers performed rough work between her legs.

  “Don’t,” she gasped. “Please don’t.”

  He’d slipped her something in that flask, and hardly anybody drove down this side road, and night was falling, and she was all alone except for Mama, who watched her TV programs less than a mile away.

  She’d had him figured out. She was just playing. This couldn’t be happening. Mr. Benson hadn’t warned her people drugged each other like this. She’d thought Bowie was just trying to get her tipsy so he could make a pass. She’d been thinking about maybe letting him kiss her. It wasn’t fair.

  “Gimme some sugar,” he said.

  Bowie gripped her wrist and moved her hand onto his exposed hard pecker. Penis, the health book called it. Like touching a snake. Her books were on the floor now, getting stomped among the trash. Her hand splayed so she didn’t touch his thing with her fingers. She was mad the way he was using her without being able to fight back, but it was like being mad in a dream, rage made out of mud and weeds at the bottom of a mill pond. She slid down on the seat as he lifted her up by the waist. The old itch raked her scalp. She reached in the glove compartment for something to fight with, came away holding a mix tape. Pain stabbed between her legs, like he was breaking her down there.

  “No,” she gasped. “I have it. I got the, the—”

  “Just relax and enjoy the ride,” he said.

  He grunted with pleasure, breath filling the car. She tried to scream.

  Instead, the world winked out of existence.

  She awoke hot and covered in syrup and sweat, head pounding. The old Pontiac smelled like pennies and ash. The Cars were on the tape player again, which ran an endless loop of Bowie’s favorite driving songs. She still felt the weight of him on her body. The night was pitch black. He’d fallen asleep on her.

  “Off me,” Amy said thickly, her tongue two sizes too big in her mouth. Her bra was still hiked up, jeans balled around one ankle. Her aching head rested against the door. Tight grip on a mix tape. She shoved at him. It was like trying to move a heavy sack of meat. His stiff pecker brushed her thigh. She pushed again, frantic now, but he seemed glued to her. Somehow they had fused together, and he’d become a part of her like some sluggish giant tick.

  She wedged her hands under his shoulders and heaved until his chest came unstuck and then his shirt parted from hers with a ripping sound.

  Bowie thudded over onto the driver’s seat and lay still against the door, one of his arms thrust in the air.

  She opened her mouth to curse him. Banshee gibberish poured out of her as she crawled half-naked on top of him and threw a punch at his face. Her fist slammed against the door. A bolt of pain shot up her hand into her wrist.

  She howled. Waves of pain cascaded through her hand. She gritted her teeth and waited it out, blinking back tears. Her hand throbbed while her head pounded like a drum timed to her heartbeat. She reached up and felt for the overhead light, gooey and sticky under the fingers of her good hand. She found the switch. The light popped on and cast a dull yellow glow.

  The car was painted in blood. A congealed layer of it covered Bowie’s shirt like thick, black tar.

  His head was gone.

  Amy screamed.

  She scrabbled back until her shoulders slammed against the passenger door. Then screamed again as she spilled out of the car into the ditch. The music sounded tinny and far away now, the roar of cicadas and crickets in her ears. A sea of fireflies winked in the dark, going about their arcane lives.

  She screamed at the night full of stars.

  Less than a mile down the road, Linda Green paced her kitchen, burning cigarette in one hand and glass of liquor in the other. She paused to rinse her throat with a fiery
swallow and went to take a drag, but the cig had burned down to the filter. A half inch of ash spilled on the linoleum.

  She lit another and went back to her pacing.

  “Where are you, baby girl,” she muttered.

  Not like her Amy to disappear like this. Her Amy was too careful for that. Linda wasn’t about to win any mother of the year prizes anytime soon, but she didn’t raise stupid. Amy knew what was what.

  Or maybe she’s like me, she thought. Smart as a rule and stupid as an all too occasional exception.

  She’d already called Reggie Albod, who’d put Sally on the phone. Sally said she’d last seen Amy on the walk home from the A & P after school. They’d parted ways on Horse Creek Road, Amy heading on home alone after that. That was around four-thirty.

  Linda looked at the clock on the wall and read eight-fifteen.

  “That does it,” she thought aloud. “I’m calling Sheriff Burton.”

  Her hand reached for the telephone and stopped.

  No, she couldn’t do that. Right now, she was being smart.

  Any other girl, she’d have called the sheriff already. But Amy wasn’t like any other girl. Amy was special and needed protection from lawbreakers and lawmen alike.

  Nothing to do but worry grooves in the floor. Five more minutes, she vowed. She’d wait by the telephone and the door for that long before she fetched her car keys and started a search on her own. She was in no condition to drive, but there wasn’t any use thinking in that direction. Amy might be in trouble.

  She’d drive all night combing this county until she found her.

  A knock at the front door.

  A jolt of current tingled through her bones. Veins turned into electric wires. She walked into the living room caught between hope and despair.

  Amy wouldn’t knock. The grim-faced sheriff was out there.

  “Oh, baby girl,” she sobbed. “Oh, Lord protect her.”

  She gasped in horror and relief when she opened the door.

  An apparition stood in the porch light. Moths fluttered around its crown.

  “Mama,” Amy said in a small, childlike voice.

  She was covered head to toe in blood.

  Blood congealed in her hair, warping it into stringy ropes. Crimson streaks and dots painted her ghost-white face. Even more blood, crusted to the consistency of cardboard, coated her torn shirt.

  Her daughter trembled, clutching her tattered red schoolbooks.

  “Oh, God,” Linda cried. “What did they do to you, baby girl?”

  “Somebody took his head clean off,” Amy said.

  She tottered into the house with glazed eyes and fell shaking against her mama. They crumpled to the floor together.

  Linda rocked her little girl in her arms. “What did you go and do?”

  “Nothing, Mama.”

  “You can tell me.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Amy cried. “It wasn’t me, I swear.”

  “Of course it wasn’t. I’m sorry, sugar. It wasn’t you. I know that.”

  “He was hurting me, Mama.”

  “Your boyfriend?”

  “Another boy. Time slipped away. He was already killed when I woke up.”

  Linda led Amy straight upstairs and drew a hot bath. She stripped the crusty clothes off her daughter and gasped again at the sight of blood between her legs. Amy’s hand was cracked and bleeding, swelling like a balloon from some trauma given or received. Linda guided her into the tub. Then she sat on the edge and scrubbed the blood from Amy’s arms. The bath turned dark with it.

  “Where is he at?” she said. “This boy.”

  “Down the road a ways in his car.”

  “Mama will take care of it,” Linda told her.

  Lord, she thought. Please don’t let there be a baby. Lord, please.

  Amy sat in the water hugging her knees. “Where do you think it went?”

  “Where what went?”

  “His head.”

  “Mama will take care of it.”

  “Mama?”

  “What?”

  “I think maybe I did a bad thing.”

  “You hush now. Mama is gonna take care of it.”

  Nineteen

  Wearing his new fedora, Goof squeezed past the giant guard and entered the bright white room. Shackleton glanced at him from the steel table, now covered with electronic gear connected by a tangle of wires. Next to him, Zack the scientist fiddled with one of these devices. A cigarette burned in a black ashtray.

  Goof’s eyes skipped past all that and settled on a bag of Burger King resting near the table’s edge. “Hey, Mr. Shackleton. How do I—”

  “Hold your horses,” the Bureau man said. “We’re busy here.”

  Zack plugged a jack into one of the boxes. Then he stood in his white lab coat and arched his back in a stretch. “We got it.”

  “It’s working now?”

  “Of course it’s working. This is why I went to medical school.”

  “Smartass. Speaking of which, what did you want to ask me, Jeff?”

  Goof ran his fingers along the brim of his fedora. “How do I look?”

  “Like—”

  “Humphrey Bogart. Who’s Humphrey Bogart?”

  “I gave you that hat days ago,” Shackleton said. “Why do you keep asking me how you look in it?”

  “A secret agent has to look his best at all times. I want to be just like you.”

  Shackleton ran his hands through his slicked-back hair and sighed. “You could start by being less annoying. You can be pretty annoying sometimes.”

  “Hey, did I ever tell you how I got the name Goof?”

  “No, can’t say you did.”

  “It was by being annoying.”

  Another sigh. “Sit down. Have some Burger King.”

  Zack smiled at Goof and nodded, one smartass acknowledging another.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Goof said.

  He reached into the bag and pulled out a lukewarm Whopper.

  “Fries in there too,” Shackleton said. “That’ll be all, Zack.”

  The scientist winked at Goof. “Happy to help.”

  “Cool guy,” Goof said after Zack left. “I like him a lot better than Officer Baby.”

  “Why do you call him that?”

  “Because he looks like a baby that never stopped growing.”

  “And why don’t you like him?”

  “He never talks,” Goof said.

  “First off, his name is Lyle Jenkins, and second, he doesn’t get paid to talk. What do you want to talk with him about? Your favorite fruitcake recipes?”

  “All right, all right. Never mind. So what’s all this junk?”

  “Another test,” Shackleton told him.

  “I thought you checked me out every way you needed.”

  “This is more than a test, really. More like—”

  “The real thing.”

  “That’s right. These tapes came straight from the FBI.”

  Goof whistled.

  “The FBI bugged a subject’s office,” Shackleton told him. “But the electronic recording equipment malfunctioned. There are some breaks in an important conversation. We’d like to know what he said.”

  “You people are pretty funny.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You’d kill somebody because of something he said that I tell you he said without actually hearing him say it.”

  “We’re not going to kill him, you goofball. We just want to know what he said. What he plans to do next. Eat your food so we can get started.”

  Goof devoured his Whopper while Shackleton set the stage.

  “There are two men in the office,” the agent said. “Both are very important people. They are having a conversation they think is private. There are some gaps we need filled.”

  “Okay. I’m ready.”

  The Bureau man held down two buttons on a tape recorder. “Field Agent Francis—”

  “Shackleton, Bureau of Teratological Affairs,�
�� Goof chimed in.

  He turned it off and gave Goof the stink-eye. “Can we just do this, please?”

  Goof held back a laugh. “Oh. I’m real sorry. I thought we started.”

  The Bureau man lit a fresh cigarette and rested it on the lip of his ashtray. He pressed the buttons again. “Field Agent Francis Shackleton, Bureau of Teratalogical Affairs. Case officer for deputized mutagenic asset Jeffrey Baker.”

  Goof liked the sound of that. Deputy Baker. The meanest lawman east of the Mississippi. Carries two six-guns on his belt and one big grudge against—

  “What are you smiling about?” the agent said. “You ready or not?”

  “Ready to serve my country. Yes, sir, I am.”

  Shackleton shook his head. He pushed a red button on an even bigger recorder with two magnetic tape reels like Mickey Mouse ears. The reels started turning. Men’s voices popped out of the ether.

  I’m not a bleeding-heart liberal, Joe.

  No, you’re a real Constitution type. Next you’ll be citing the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments.

  I’m a good Republican is what I am.

  So is the president. Maybe you heard of him.

  The Bureau man held up one finger. Here it comes.

  Don’t give me your party loyalty bullshit, Joe. If Interior wants a—

  “Budget increase for BTA, they can show how they spend their funding,” Goof rattled off. “We already hand over a fortune—”

  From the Treasury every year.

  Shackleton raised his finger again.

  Do you want an audit? Is that what you’re saying? Would that—

  “Satisfy you?” Goof finished. “No, I aim to go further. What do you mean? I mean a full investigation. I’m talking committee hearings. You sure you want to do that? You could—”

  Embarrass the administration in an election year.

  Again, the finger.

  Yeah, I’m sure. Pushing dirt under the carpet is fine until you’re constantly tripping over the fucking bulge. If BTA wants to clean up its act, I can let them slide. Otherwise, I’m coming for them. I’m tired of—

  “Seeing taxpayer money wasted every year while my phone rings off the hook with reports of abuse in the—”

  Homes.

  So what’s this really—

  Shackleton turned off the recording. The reels froze.