Dead Stop (17 page)

The young man
screamed in pain, and also at the sight of the yellow toothed maw snapping like
a rabid wolf less than an inch from his nose. The awful smell of the thing
threatened to overwhelm him and Deke gagged in an effort to keep from inhaling
its stench. And the way she kept driving her face at his reminded him horribly
of the prelude to a kiss…before she would stretch those jaws wide and try to
bite his face off again.

I don’t want
to die like this,
he despaired…knowing full well that several people had
already done exactly that in the past few minutes.

And then he was
falling.

The door Deke
had been pressed back against suddenly opened, and he tumbled backwards into
the hallway beyond…with his grisly assailant right on top of him.

Stars blasted
across his vision as his head bounced off the concrete floor. Pain split a
fiery crack in the back of his skull, leaving him temporarily blinded and
confused while thrashing with the horror on the cement surface.  Screams
erupted around him, and he heard the doctor’s voice yelling for somebody to
close the door.

The boot to the
side of his head didn’t help either.

“Ow! Holy Shit!
Kick
it
, not me!”

“Sorry!” Marisa
snarled, but the rate her boot flew back and forth past his eyes didn’t
diminish in the least. It connected with the monsters head three straight
times, knocking it sideways, but the thing didn’t seem fazed in the least. Its
one glaring eye continued to stare straight into his own like killing him was
the only thing in the universe that mattered. Even worse, the last kick
dislodged his forearm from under its chin…giving it a clear bite at his face.

This time he
couldn’t stop it.

“Nooooo!” Deke
cried out as the things widening jaws filled his vision.

Then all the air
was driven from his lungs as something landed on both of them with tremendous
force.

“Get…
off
…him!”
Stacey shrieked, now sitting on its back. Her teeth were bared and her face was
livid with what appeared to be pure rage. The girl grabbed the horror by the
hair on both sides of its head and leaned back hard in an effort to pull its
snapping teeth away from him. It worked…for a second.

Then with a wet
tearing sound the corpse’s entire scalp and the skin on the side of its face
slid free of its skull, leaving the waitress holding the dripping white curls
and death mask in her hand. Stacey shrieked in disgust and threw the offending
mass down the hall towards the office. It landed with a viscous plop in front
of Big Earl’s door.  At the same time, the sudden release of tension on
the monster’s head caused its bony cranium to fly forward and butt Deke between
the eyes.

The stars
returned, and the pain made tears well.

The boy groped
blindly with his free arm, trying to get it between him and the things mouth
again. Any second he expected the feel of those rotten teeth sinking into the
sides of his face. He tried to turn over, but the combined weight of the
monster and Stacey in these confined quarters had him pinned. His vision
cleared enough to see the little waitress now had the thing in a rear headlock
and was straining to hold it back. The combined pressure of both his and her
arms under its chin held its jaw shut and was the only reason he still featured
a nose.

Things were not
going well.

And the clock
was still ticking…

“Marisa,” he
gasped at the waitress, who currently looked to be hunting an angle to get
another kick in. “The keys…the keys are in my front pocket. Go get that door
locked and…Aughhhh!”

Pain now lit up
his shoulder.

Deke twisted his
head to see that the old trucker had arrived and somehow maneuvered over to the
other side of him, grabbed the nightmare’s free hand, and now started pulling
it free from his shoulder. But as he pulled back, the dead woman tried to
clench her hand into a fist…threatening to tear a huge chunk of his muscle
free.  The boy cried out again, and blood welled around the monster’s
fingers where they penetrated his shirt.

“Okay,” the old
man breathed loudly, “you want to play rough? So be it.”

Deke’s eyes
widened as the old trucker pulled a hunting knife out from behind his back. It
was a deadly looking thing with an antler handle, a saw-toothed back, and a
wickedly curved blade. The fact it gleamed only inches from his face made it
seem enormous. But with all the thrashing going on, Deke wasn’t sure if the
knife’s appearance counted as a good thing or not.

“Hey now,” he
gasped. “Be careful with that! I don’t wa…ow! Owww! Fine! She’s twisting it…Cut
her! Do what you got to do! Oh crap, it hurts!”

The trucker
wasted no time in sliding the blade in under one of the withered fingers and
then turning the edge up. “Turn your head,” he instructed. “I don’t know how
much this blade will jump when it cuts through.”

“Right,” Deke
twisted his face away…

…only to find
himself nose to nostril holes with the horror on top of him.

Stacey still
straddled its back and had its head gripped tight, with one of her arms under
its chin. She was breathing hard, and obviously squeezing for all she was
worth. It looked odd, but Deke realized it did an effective job of keeping the
thing’s mouth shut where it couldn’t bite. At the same time, being eyeball to
eyeball with this monstrosity was going to be the fuel for a lifetime’s worth
of nightmares.

Assuming he had
enough lifetime left for nightmares.

“Got them!”
Marisa stood up on his other side. She held the key ring in her hand as she
pushed herself back to her feet. He hadn’t even realized she had been fishing
around in his pocket. “As soon as I find the right key that fits the lock, I’ll
have Harley back here to help!”

“You mean you
don’t know which key it is either?” Deke couldn’t help but query.

“Hey!” she
snapped. “Do I look like an assistant manager to you? I just…oh, nevermind!”

Marisa turned
and raced for the front of the restaurant as fast as her long legs would carry
her.

Deke hoped she
got lucky and hit the right key soon.

He was hurt, and
getting the hell beaten out of him by this monster.

The other
problem was this thing didn’t seem to tire, while Stacey was already showing
signs of exhaustion. She was having to give it her all just to keep the things
jaws shut, meaning her energy was depleting that much faster. Even worse, fresh
blood ran in rivulets from the gashes in her arm and he knew that had to be
taking its toll on her as well.

What he didn’t
know was how much longer he was going to be able to hold the thing’s other hand
out of the fight. He had it by the wrist, pinned between him and monster, and
he suspected if that hadn’t been the case it would have already managed to jerk
free. Even under these circumstances, it still fought with unrelenting ferocity
to get loose, and he knew it was only a matter of time.

Pain lanced in
his shoulder again, and Deke groaned aloud.

“Only one more,
son,” the old man wheezed to him, “Just hang in there. I’ve almost got it
free.”

“Hanging in
there,” the boy whimpered.

Deke had a
feeling this would be over in the next minute or two…one way or another.
Unfortunately he could see several ways this could finish badly but hadn’t
managed to imagine any happy endings yet.

“There!” Grandpa
Tom exclaimed.

Another flare of
pain lit up Deke’s shoulder…

…and then things
went from bad to worse.

The monster
jerked its freed hand back, now missing three fingers. The move seemed
reflexive, but couldn’t have been more effective if the thing had calculated
it. Its elbow drove into Stacey’s ribs with a thunderous impact Deke could feel
through his contact with their bodies atop him.

“Ouff!” The girl
grabbed her side as she tumbled off the creature’s back.

The dead woman
twisted with undiminished strength and jerked its other hand free of Deke’s
grasp. It now fixed its baleful glare on the young waitress gasping on the
floor beside them.

“Stacey! Look
out!”

Stacey’s pain
glazed eyes widened as she realized she had become the object of the thing’s
attention. The wounded girl mustered a thin scream and scrambled backwards as
the horror clambered after her in pursuit.

It closed the
gap with her in a second.

The monster lunged
for the kill…

…only this time
to be brought down by Deke from behind.

“Oh no you
don’t!” he grunted, snaking his arms under the creature’s armpits and clasping
his hands behind its neck.

Stacey scurried
clear as he planted the things face into the concrete.

It still fought
with wild intensity, but he had it in a full nelson and it couldn’t reach him
with either its talons or its teeth. On the other hand, now all he could do was
hold on. It amounted to another stalemate, with its duration once again dictated
by how long he could last before exhaustion caused his grip to fail.

Still, every
second he held on to the thing was one more second Marisa had to get that door
locked. He brought all of the strength he had left to bear on the monster,
trying to force its head down into its chest. He couldn’t believe how much
effort it took, considering the shrunken state of the thing’s neck.

“Deke! Over
here!”

He looked up to
see Stacey holding a large metal door open in the wall. She clutched her side
with her other hand, and her breathing was short and labored.

“Try and throw
her in here!” the girl repeated. “Grandpa! Grab her legs while Deke’s got her
like that! We can lock her in!”

“Right,” the old
man wheezed and crawled over to where Deke had the thing pinned. The trucker
was pale, and clutched his left arm as if it hurt him, but his face was set in
grim determination. “Hang on to her, boy…but roll off and over to your side.
Once I get her legs off the ground, that should take away a lot of her
leverage.”

“Whatever you
say,” Deke panted.

At this point
the boy was ready to try anything.

He rolled over
to his side, pulling the thrashing corpse over onto its side as well.

“Got her,” the
trucker grunted. “Now see if you can get to your knees.

To Deke’s
surprise, the trucker was right. Once the thing’s feet were off the ground, it
couldn’t brace to bring much of its strength into play. Even better, he
discovered the thing didn’t weigh as much as he originally thought. Perhaps
being dead for a while had made it much lighter.

That’s when he
realized this plan might actually work.

Hope flared as
he struggled erect, with Grandpa Tom ahead of him holding the thing’s feet.
Things had just gotten much better. Now that it hung completely off the ground,
the monster could only twist with limited effect between them. Its arms flailed
uselessly out to the sides, posing no threat to anybody.

“I like this
plan!” Deke enthused “Let’s do this!”

The two hustled
the writhing corpse over to where Stacey held the big door open. Deke could
feel a blast of cold air issue out, and realized it must be the restaurant’s
walk in freezer. The irony didn’t escape him.

“Oh yeah! Back
to the cooler with you, Grandma!” he exclaimed. “Okay, mister. When you get to
the door, just drop her feet and jump out of the way. Got it?”

“Got it,” the
trucker panted.

“You ready with
that door, Stacey?”

The girl said
nothing, but nodded…her face tight and eyes wide.

“Okay, when I
throw her I’m going to yell ‘now’ and jump back. Got it?”

“Yeah,” she half
whispered. “Got it.”

The two of them
positioned themselves in front of the open door, with Grandpa Tom standing with
his back to the freezer, holding her feet. They locked eyes with each other,
and the trucker cleared his throat.

“Are you ready
for this, boy?”

“Yeah,” Deke
flashed a tired grin. “No time like the present.”

“Then, go!”

The old man
dropped the things feet and lurched out of the doorway. Deke lunged forward as
its legs came down, and used the momentum to launch the monster through the
entrance in front of them.

“Now!” he cried
and jumped back.

The door almost
grazed him as it went past, and slammed shut with a reverberating crash. The
noise echoed in the concrete and cinder brick hallway. Stacey grabbed the pin
hanging from a chain attached to the door and drove it down through a little
hole in the handle. A split second later a thud issued from the door as
something smacked into it from the other side.

The three of
them backed across the hallway from the freezer and stared wide eyed at the
steel frame.

Two more thuds
sounded from inside.

The heavy metal
structure barely even vibrated, and all three breathed a huge sigh of relief.

It was over.

The monster was
trapped.

Chapter
Six: Deluge

With a
thunderous explosion of lightning, the storm finally unleashed its full wrath
on the already drenched landscape below.

Old timers
called storms like this a “Texas Blue Norther.”

Rolling in from
the Rockies out of the Northwest, it was like an advancing atmospheric wall
that could cause temperatures to plunge over 25 degrees in almost no time at
all. Arriving at nightfall only intensified the drop. Blue Northers almost
always brought a downpour, and when they came at night they could produce
spectacular storms. This one was no exception.

Water hurtled to
earth from the lightning fractured sky in a titanic deluge.  It descended
in towering, wind driven curtains that tore through the nearby fields, and
smashed against the asphalt lot of the Textro with enough force to raise a foot
of spray that hung over the pavement like a fine mist. The outside lights of
the truck stop became dim haloed spheres swaying like disembodied wraiths in
the gale. Wind howled with the rage of all the Furies as it roared between the
trucks and hammered the structures with volley after volley of liquid bullets.