Doll Face (2 page)

Chazz unrolled his window. “Ramona! Get back in here! We have to go.”

“I’m not going.”

“Get in here or I’ll leave you behind! I swear to God I will!”

“Then go,” she said. “And when the cops arrive, I’ll give them your name and address and the license of your van. Go ahead, Chazz, run from your fucking mistakes like you always do. Just see how far you get.”

His jaw hung open. “I can’t believe you. After all we’ve been through.”

The truth was, he
did
believe her. This is exactly what he’d expected her to do when he needed her to stand with him. It wasn’t that she had high morals or steadfast ethics. No, it wasn’t that at all. She had been waiting for something like this. Waiting for a time when he needed her like never before so she could shit all over his parade.

I told her I loved her, too. I actually told the bitch that.

“Fuck you then,” he said.

Even though he knew that she had him, he kept trying to start the van but it wasn’t happening. The distributor must have gotten wet and all he was doing now was wearing down the battery. The only thing to do was wait, but he couldn’t do that. He didn’t have the time to wait.

He heard the side door of the van slide open.

He whipped his head around. “What the fuck are you people doing?”

What they were doing was apparent: they were getting out. Lex got out followed by Soo-Lee, Creep and Danielle right behind her. Fucking herd mentality. They were all just like Ramona; they couldn’t wait to hang him out to dry. Well, that was fine. They would need him, too, some day. That’s what he was going to wait for.

As Creep walked by the open window, Chazz seized him by the arm. “I said,
what the fuck are you doing?”

Creep, with uncharacteristic defiance, yanked his arm away. “You ran somebody down. Don’t you think we should check and see if that somebody’s all right?”

But the idea of that made Chazz practically deflate inside.

3

As he followed Ramona over to where the body lay in a crumpled heap, Lex knew that was what he loved about guys like Chazz: the bigger the muscles, the smaller the balls. He was a real force of nature out on the field—Christ, the guy had rushed for three touchdowns against those animals from Cardinal Sprague and that was beyond belief—but when it came down to it, he was a gutless coward. Things had always been too easy for him. He got by on his natural prowess, his athleticism and dark good looks. But none of that was going to buy him beans this time.

Not that Lex was going to tell him that.

Chazz was big. Chazz was powerful. Maybe he had a peanut for a brain, but he could kick serious ass and Lex had no interest in being on the wrong side of
that.
There would be no physical contest between them, because Chazz would have stomped him flat. Mentally, Lex knew he could have pared him down to shavings in a matter of moments, but physically, hah, forget it.

Chazz was back by the van, grumbling.

Soo-Lee was right behind Lex. Creep and Danielle were following her, but hesitantly like they weren’t moving of their own volition but being towed along by a string.

When they got to the body, Lex said, “Is he…is he alive?”

Ramona shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

“Well, is he breathing?” Creep asked.

But nobody could really say.

It appeared to be a man and he was facedown in the wet street. One arm was stretched out, the other tucked beneath him. One of his legs looked like it was broken at the knee, the foot turned nearly around on the ankle. If he was alive, then he was pretty broken up.

Ramona jogged off and, after a few seconds of arguing with Chazz, returned with a flashlight.

She shined it on the body.

And immediately gasped.

The guy was wearing a dark coat, gray woolen pants, and dirty brown shoes. He was hardly a fashion plate. Lex figured from the way he was dressed he might be a bum or a homeless person or something. His clothes were ragged, his shoes badly scuffed. It looked like he’d grabbed what he could find from a dumpster out back of St. Vinnie’s.

Beyond that, he didn’t look so good.

His body was terribly distorted—hips twisted, back hunched, head bent to the side at an unnatural angle. There was a rut in his lower back where he had been run over. One of his hands was smashed, marked by a clear tire tread.

Lex didn’t know much about medicine, but even he knew that if this guy survived this, he would never walk right again or even stand up.

“Well?” Creep said. “Aren’t you going to check him?”

The tone of his voice suggested that Lex would have to do it because there was no way in hell he was going to. The revulsion was thick under his words. Danielle wasn’t much better. She was mumbling nonsensical things and Lex was almost certain they were a jumbled version of the
Lord’s Prayer.

“Is he fucking dead or what?” Chazz said, coming up behind them.

He was looking around nervously to see if any of the good folks of Stokes had come out to investigate yet. Lex figured that he was still planning on running.

“Let’s just get out of here. I ain’t going to prison over this guy. No fucking way.”

“Just calm down, you idiot,” Ramona told him. “I’ll tell them I was driving.”

“You…
hey,
that might work,” Chazz said, brightening considerably. “It just might.”

“Good idea,” Lex said. “Let your girlfriend do the time for you.”

“You better shut up,” Chazz told him.

Lex shrugged. “I wonder if it’s true what they say.”

Chazz narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“All that stuff about prison rape.”

“You motherfucker—”

Lex knew he’d pushed it too far with that one. Chazz came right at him and he would have had him, too, if Ramona hadn’t gotten between them and told them both to knock it the fuck off. She was a petite thing, but when she got pissed, she was filled with black, seeping venom.

“Lex?” she said. “Check his pulse.”

He kneeled down next to the body. In the beam of the flashlight he couldn’t see any blood or other fluids leaking from it. The pavement was wet but only with rain. The others were all watching him, pressing in, eyes wide, mouths hanging open. Christ, he felt like he was about to be lynched.

They trust
me
to do this. An engineering major for chrissake. Why not Danielle? She’s studying nursing.

But he knew the answer to that.

Danielle was a basket case on a good day and today was not a good day. Sighing, he reached down toward the guy’s extended, smashed hand. It looked like a withered funeral lily. Very pale, almost white like it was fake or something. Remembering how they did such things on TV, Lex placed his fore- and middle fingers together and reached them beneath the guy’s wrist.

And yanked them back.

“What?” Chazz said.

But he wasn’t even sure himself. The guy’s wrist did not feel like skin at all, more like rubber. Cool rubber. It wasn’t right. Lex had never touched a corpse before, but he had a pretty good idea that they did not feel like that.

Swallowing, he touched the wrist with an extended finger.

No, that wasn’t right. It was
like
rubber, but it was definitely not rubber. It felt like some kind of plastic…soft, yielding, almost doughy. He had the feeling that if he jabbed his finger into this guy, it would leave an indentation that would not push itself back out.

“I don’t know what the hell’s going on here,” he said. “But that ain’t skin.”

4

Soo-Lee reached down and took Lex by the arm, pulling him away from the body and to his feet. It was an impulsive action and she was not even conscious of doing so. The only thing she was aware of was the fact that there was something very wrong here.

“Well, somebody’s gotta check him,” Creep said.

“How about
you?”
Lex suggested.

“Fuck that.”

Soo-Lee looked from the body to the houses and buildings, all of which were black and silent. No, none of this was right. The whole damn town almost looked like a set from a movie. That was insane and it made no sense whatever, but that’s what she was thinking.

Everything’s artificial here. Nothing’s real.

A creeping dread had gotten beneath her skin now and she started to tremble minutely. She badly wanted to take Lex by the arm and run, run as fast and far away from this place as they possibly could. She tried to speak, but her mouth was dry as sand.

“Listen,” she said when she finally got her voice working. “I think Chazz is right. I think we need to drive out of here right now.”

“At last, some common sense,” Chazz said.

“We can’t leave the scene of an accident,” Ramona reminded them. “Now let’s just figure out if this guy is okay or not. Can we all agree on that?”

Lex nodded. “Of course, but I’m telling you right now there’s something weird about that body. I’m not touching it.”

Soo-Lee held on to him tightly as if to guarantee that.

Everyone stood there a moment. Nobody said a thing. They all just waited around like mourners, staring at what was sprawled at their feet as if what Lex had said was not perfectly ridiculous, but made a certain amount of sense. In fact, they all backed away a bit in case the body moved.

“Well, somebody needs to do something,” Creep said.

“Let’s just go,” Danielle suggested.

“Oh, you people,” Ramona sighed.

She stepped away from them and whipped out her iPhone. She dialed 911. Soo-Lee held her breath. She was certain it wouldn’t work, certain they wouldn’t get a signal way out here. That’s how things worked in horror movies and she was nearly convinced that they had stepped into one, somehow and someway.

But it worked.

Ramona told the operator that they had a man down in the street. He had been hit by a car and they weren’t sure if he was alive or not, just unconscious. She answered a series of questions and then she told them where they were.

“Stokes,” she said. “Just off Highway Eight. S-T-O-K-E-S. Yes, Stokes.”

Here it comes,
Soo-Lee thought.
Here comes the bad part.

Ramona was clearly getting agitated. “Listen, I’m not an idiot. The sign said Stokes.” She held the iPhone away from her ear, looking at the others. “Didn’t it say Stokes?”

But nobody was sure. She had been the one who’d seen it.

“That’s what you said.
Stokes,”
Lex told her.

Everyone was standing there in a little knot, pressed together out of some nameless anxiety as Ramona argued with the 911 operator. Soo-Lee had nearly relaxed, thinking Ramona was bringing civilization and safety to them in the form of cops and paramedics.

But that wasn’t the case.

“They’re saying there is no fucking Stokes,” Ramona said, more than a little exasperated. “They never heard of a town called Stokes.”

Lex shrugged. “Fuck it. They should be able to track your signal with GPS.”

“Yeah,” Creep said. “They should be triangulating you right now.”

They won’t find this place,
Soo-Lee thought.

Ramona finally lost it. “Just fucking get here, will you?”

Chazz laughed nervously. “See? They don’t give a fuck, so why should we?”

“Somebody’s still got to check that body,” Lex said.

5

“Oh, for godsake,” Ramona sighed.

She stepped forward and crouched down. She mumbled something under her breath about the poor guy being hurt and how she couldn’t believe everyone was acting like this. But despite her common sense, concern, and daring, they all sensed the hesitation in her words and the hesitation in her movements when she reached out to touch the body. It was like she was sticking her fingers under a shelf where an especially large spider had just crawled.

She grasped the wrist and pulled her hand away.

“See?” Lex said. “Maybe it’s an artificial limb or something.”

“Get it over with already,” Chazz snapped, getting frustrated and more than a little pissed-off—two of his most common moods—but not daring to come any closer.

Ramona felt like a kid on a dare.

The others were waiting for her to touch the body again as if it was some dead thing they’d found stuffed in a sewer pipe. Sucking in a breath between clenched teeth, she touched the wrist again. Lex was right: it wasn’t skin. It was more like rubber or vinyl, oddly smooth and soft to the touch. She had an insane idea that she could have kneaded it in her fingers, pressed it into any shape she wanted.