Creekers (39 page)

“That was fun,” Susan said as they walked back to the car. “We should come here again sometime.”

“Yeah, it’s a great place,” Phil replied, slightly stunned. Maybe her comment was just a casual one, but if she didn’t plan on seeing him again, why would she be making such a suggestion? At the very least, he could take this as a good sign that their first date had gone well.

But it was still early, and now that Phil could pretty much set his own hours, he didn’t need to be going into work by eight p.m.

Where do I take her now?

“Hey, Phil,” she said, “I know this is going to sound really lame, but—”

“Let me guess,” he said, and opened the car door for her. “You have to go home early tonight.”

“No, I have to go to the library.”

“The
library?”
Phil’s face crinkled. “What for?”

“I left some of my school books there last night. I want to pick them up before somebody rips them off. Do you mind?”

Phil almost laughed. At least now he didn’t have to think of a place to go next. “No problem. Next stop, the library.”

He started the car, was about to pull out, when she added, “And thanks for dinner.”

Then she leaned over and kissed him very lightly on the lips.

— | — | —

Eighteen

The trip to the county library,
in Millersville, had taken them back down the Route, across town. “Look, more Creekers,” Susan pointed out when they cruised past the intersection of the Old Governor’s Bridge Road.

Phil spotted them.

Two figures trudged along, a boy in his late teens and a much younger girl, probably his sister. They dragged old burlap sacks behind them, no doubt full of discarded bottles and cans which they’d scrounged from beneath the bridge. Lots of the local punks parked just off the bridge at night, swilling beer and chucking the empties over the side into the water. The litter eventually washed up onto the creekbed, where hillfolk, mostly Creeker kids, would pick it up and sell it for pennies per pound to the recyclers. Picking up junk was all the employment most of these kids would ever have.

Susan, in remorse, turned her face away as they passed. “Christ, that’s sad. Those poor kids.”

“Yeah,” Phil agreed. “I see them all the time now, collecting garbage, or fishing off the streams with strings in the water.”

He’d caught only a glimpse of the pair, filthy, disheveled, in threadbare clothes going to rot. The little girl had no right arm, while the boy possessed arms that were overly long, his hands swinging down past his knees. Their misshapen heads turned, two pairs of tiny scarlet eyes glancing up hopelessly as Phil’s car drove past.

“Some Creekers seem a lot worse off than others,” he observed. “Like those two there—Christ.”

“The way I understand it is it’s kind of like a genetic potluck,” Susan said. “The more these little societies inbreed among themselves, the more deformed they are. Some of the reproductive genes are more defective than others.”

Last night’s excursion into Sallee’s backroom was good proof of that. The Creeker girls Phil had seen dancing were obviously birth defected, yet they also had inherited plenty of normal, and even beautiful, physical traits. Some of them, in fact, couldn’t even be distinguished as Creekers at all, until he’d looked hard.

“And the strangest thing is Natter himself,” Phil went on, following the Route down to the turnoff onto the county expressway. “He’s so big and deformed, but I also remember him being very smart.”

“I don’t know that much about it,” Susan said, “but I did take a sociology class a few years ago on dissociated cultures. Inbred societies aren’t that uncommon, even in this day and age. It’s typical for certain members to have extraordinarily high I.Q.’s while being physically deformed at the same time. And it’s these people who are always the leaders.”

“That fits Natter to a tee.”

“Well, if you want to know more about it, we’re going to the right place.”

Yeah, he realized.
The library.
Natter was a Creeker, and his PCP operation was run by Creekers. It would be a good idea for Phil to find out as much about them as possible. Then he could deal with them more effectively and with more cognizance.

The library was antiquated: a file card index system instead of a computer, which he was used to from his college days. Susan helped him find his way around after she retrieved her books. They located several titles on the subject, from the very basic
—Inbred Life in Appalachia
to the very clinical
—Genetic Reproductive Defectivity and the Human Genetic Transfection Process.

Phil appraised the stack of books in his arms as they walked back out to the Malibu.

“No Doonesbury for me tonight,” he said.

««—»»

The end of their date had been cut a bit short; Susan, after all, had to work tonight, too, but her hours weren’t as lenient as Phil’s. A goodnight kiss was all he’d gotten at her door, but it was all he’d expected. To push for anything more would’ve been a bad move—even a fatal one, if he hoped to continue seeing her.

Which he did.

And, anyway, it was a good kiss.

Yeah, I really like her,
he told himself, walking back to his own room.
She’s…cool.
It came hard to believe that they were hitting it off this well, considering her original concept of him. She probably still had some doubts, though; who wouldn’t? His Metro record would be a blot on his life forever, despite the fact that the whole thing was a lie. But at least it seemed to him that Susan truly believed him.

Give it some time,
he thought.

There was no need to change for work; jeans and T-shirt would do for undercover at Sallee’s. But he still had some time to kill, so he sat down in his busted chair and began to read.

««—»»

Just a little bustin’up,
Blackjack thought. That’s all he had time for tonight; he had to make a major pick-up at Rip’s lab out in Tylersville by midnight.
But I still got me an hour
, he reminded himself, looking at his watch.
I’ll make it quick.

It never took Blackjack long to put a good busting on a girl.

He followed the fucked-up kid’s truck up through an old logging road off the Route. The price was right, and Blackjack had heard that you could buy a Creeker girl once you got to be known at Sallee’s. And that chick he’d seen in the backroom?

Yeah,
Blackjack thought.

Once he’d gotten a look at her up on that stage, he knew he had to put a busting on her. He’d heard that the kid with the big head was the one you dealt with; Blackjack figured he must be Natter’s pimp; that’s why he watched the door. “Fifty fer a half hour,” the kid quoted. “Sev-tee-five fer a full hour. More fer special.”

Blackjack read the scene right. “Special, huh?” He laid two c-notes on the kid. “How’s about a little bustin’ up?”

“Shore, just don’t’cha cut her none, or kill her. Cody’d be pissed.”

Cody
, Blackjack thought. As in Cody Natter. That big ugly fuckin’ Creeker was one dude even Blackjack didn’t want to fuck with. These Creekers gave him the creeps, and everybody knew they looked after their own.

When the kid had taken the green, Blackjack noticed that he had two thumbs on one hand.

“Just foller me,” the kid had said. “‘Tain’t far.”

The rutted road wound through the woods, then sidelined a long grassy field. It was hot tonight, and muggy, but that’s the way Blackjack liked it. And he was getting hot himself just thinking about that Creeker chick he’d seen dancing the first set.
A four-titter
—He’d heard about them, but tonight was the first time he’d ever gandered one with his own eyes. And the tiniest little mouth, probably not even big enough to stick a cigarette in.

Yeah. Here was a girl he could bust up good.

See, there was no kick if he didn’t bust ’em up first. That was Blackjack’s style—going for the kick. Of course, sometimes he could get a little carried away. One time he’d picked up this little truckstop whore at the Bonfire. He slapped her around a bit first, and then he gagged her when she started to get too noisy, stuffed a big wad of toilet paper in her yap, then tied one of her stockings through her teeth.

Then he got to really punching her up.

He beat her face down to pulp—it looked like a busted open blueberry pie by the time he was through—then he got to giving her a good reaming. Only problem was she all of a sudden got real loose back there, and when Blackjack flipped her over to see what was wrong, he saw that the busting up he gave that pretty face of hers must’ve been a bit much ’cos she was stone-cold dead. Oh, well. In fact, he’d wound up killing several gals in the past—all accidents, kind of. And his part-time partner, Jake Rhodes? Now there was a dude who really went for the busting up, killed plenty of gals, and on purpose, too.

Funny, though, now that Blackjack thought about it, he hadn’t seen old Jake for damn near a month.

Probably out roustin’ more junkies,
he figured.
Lookin’ for a kick.

That’s all Blackjack wanted: a good kick. And this Creeker gal, all fucked-up like she was, that would make the kick extra special…