Lot Lizards (20 page)

But the sickening sense of urgency wouldn't leave her stomach.

Even if they
were
in bed
, she thought, heading back inside,
Grace would wake up and answer. And if the lines were down, I wouldn't have gotten anything at all.

She would ask for enough time to hurry home and if Dina didn't give it to her, she'd go anyway.

In the restaurant, Jenny winced against the three streams of harsh light, looking for Dina. She spotted her by the counter talking to one of the busboys, the newest one. Dina did not look happy. Jenny took a deep breath and approached her.
 

"...and if it took you
that
long to do it," Dina was saying quietly and calmly, "I don't know
how
you can possibly do your job competently. And frankly that worries me, so I hope you'll keep my concerns in mind."
 

He nodded and hurried away, and then Dina turned to Jenny.

"Look," Jenny said, "I know this is the wrong time, but I need my break now. I think something is wrong at my house. My little girl wasn't well earlier and—"
 

"She's been sick for a while, hasn't she?"

"Yes, very sick."

"Well then, it isn't unusual that she's not well, is it?"

"But no one is answering the phone."

"The phones are down."

"Not the payphones. I got a ring but there was no answer."

Dina frowned. "What exactly is wrong with your daughter?" she asked, folding her arms.

Jenny tried not to flinch. Had Dina heard something?
From whom
? Jenny wondered. She'd told no one what was
really
wrong with Shawna. Grace was the only one who knew. Yreka was not a town with a terribly open mind and Jenny knew word would get around quickly. She was afraid she might even lose her job and she simply couldn't afford that. So she told no one that Shawna's cancer was a complication of the AIDS virus which Shawna had contracted from a blood transfusion as a baby. Instead, she used half truths to answer questions about her daughter, as she did with Dina.
 

"She has bone cancer."

"Mmm. Well...try calling again and if you still don't get an answer...take a few minutes to go over there and check.
But
!" She held up a finger, smirked and narrowed her eyes slightly. "Punch out first. Do it on your own time."
 

Jenny heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank you. If I go, I promise I'll—"

"
All right everybody, we need your attention
!"
 

Both Jenny and Dina flinched and spun toward the booming voice. Byron was standing in the middle of the room with a gaunt pale man.
 

Dina muttered, "What in the
hell
is he doing?"
 

The din of the crowd lowered slightly, but most people paid no attention.

The man beside Byron started to speak but Byron touched his arm and shook his head. Byron reached into his coat pocket and removed a gun, held it up and shot it at the ceiling.
 

After a wave of simultaneous gasps, the room fell silent and no one moved.

"Okay, listen up!" Byron shouted. "We've gotta problem and we need the help of everybody in this room. Everybody in this
building
! We're all
stuck
here, right? We aren't going anywhere, right? There's been a spill on the freeway and if s closed and we're
all
gonna be here for a while. For hours. Maybe till sunrise or later. Now with
that
in mind, I want you to know that
this
guy—" He gestured toward the man beside him. "—has made me aware of a problem we've got outside this building. We are
all
in a
lot
of danger. Unfortunately, you aren't gonna wanna believe me when I tell you
why
we're in danger and all I can say is I sure as
hell
wouldn't be doin'
this
shit if it weren't
true
. So
listen up
! If you don't..." He looked around for a moment, almost as if he were uncertain of what he were doing, "...you're on your own." He turned to the man beside him and nodded.
 

The man seemed to think carefully for a moment, then took a moment longer to shift his shoulders, as if he were gearing up for something as—
 

—Dina walked away from Jenny, stalking toward Byron with a stiff back, head tilted back and chin jutting. She stopped two feet away from him, took a deep breath, held out a hand and said quietly, "Give me the gun, Byron. Give it to me."
 

Byron looked at her in disbelief.

"You
know
this will mean your job, Byron, unless you stop
now
." She waggled her fingers and stiffened her outstretched arm.
 

Byron sucked his lips in and his eyes became wide. "You can
have
my job!" he shouted. "You can
have
my fuckin' job after
this
! I
quit
! Now
you
—" He swung his arm up and put the gun in her face; his hand trembled. "—
shut
the fuck
up
!"
 

Dina's hand dropped to her side heavily and she backed up several steps, jaw slack.

Facing the crowd, Byron said, "Now this man is gonna talk, and if there's a brain in your fuckin' head, you'll listen to him!" He turned to his companion and said quietly, "Go ahead..."
 

... while Jon shuddered in the silent darkness. He suddenly had to urinate and the urge, coupled with his fear, was so intense that he was afraid he might wet his pants.
 

Once his eyes had adjusted to the light, Jon saw that the little girl was in a bundle beside him, staring at him with wide, watery blue eyes, her hands doubled in fists just below her chin.
 

But the woman-thing crouched before him was what frightened him the most. Her hair was black with grey streaks, disheveled and bushy, with some strands reaching her shoulders and others stopping at a level with her jawline, and it shined as if it were wet. Her nose was flat, its bridge lumpy with ridges and her skin, which was lined with wrinkles so fine that they resembled bloodless paper cuts, was the color of water-diluted milk and stretched tight over cheekbones that looked almost as sharp as the fangs that hung like slightly yellowed icicles between the thin grey lips of a pronounced snout. She was naked; patches of fine grey hair grew from her round breasts, swirling around erect brown nipples, and a strip of it ran down the middle of her concave belly between the ridges of a pronounced ribcage, blending into the dark triangular thatch that grew thickly between her stringy muscular legs. Thick black nails—like those that curled from her bony fingers—rose from her hairy toes and hunched over their ends, tapering to knife-like points. But the worst of it all, the thing that made Jon's mind reel, rose from behind her shoulders and stretched high above her head, pressed together and folded to her back, with black leathery skin as wrinkled as raisins.
 

Wings. Ridged bat-like wings.

The creature embraced the girl, lifted her to her breasts and leaned forward, opening her fanged mouth wide, her eyes never leaving Jon's...
 

...while Bill spoke to the crowd in the restaurant.

"Our problem now," he said, having spoken for a few minutes already to a roomful of silent, staring faces, "is to keep
them
out of
here
. Now, I think I know how we can do that. They can't—" He stopped, almost said "
we
can't", but decided against it; he hadn't told them about himself and didn't think it would be a good idea. "—they can't tolerate garlic. We've gotten a lot of garlic from the basement, but we've used some of it already and we don't know if there will be enough left to do what we need to do."
 

"A-and...what’s that?" a woman asked timidly.

"We need to surround this place with it, especially all the doors and windows. To keep them out."

A bellowing laugh rang out and Bill turned toward the trucker's coffee counter to see a hefty man with a bushy brown beard, head back, laughing toward the ceiling. "Vampires!" he shouted jovially. "We got vampires, huh? Well, you're in luck. I gotta truckload a garlic out in the lot. Maybe there's somebody here's gotta truckload a crosses, too!" he continued laughing.
 

A scrawny fellow a few seats down spoke up: "No, no, don't laugh. It sounds right to me. I've been hearing stories."

"
What
stories?" the bearded man barked.
 

"From friends. Other truckers. About lot lizards who...
bit
'em. Just like this guy says. And they stole shit from the truck. I always figured there was
something
weird about it, but..."
 

"Ha." The bearded man shook his head. "It's a fuckin' fairy tale's, what it is. Those girls just bit 'em because they was enjoyin' gettin' their brains fucked out, is what
that
was. And you can't tell me—" The trucker stopped mid-sentence when Byron rushed him, grabbed his head and pulled his head back, touching the barrel of the gun to his throat.
 

"You shittin' us about hauling garlic?" he demanded through clenched teeth. "You gotta load of garlic outside?"

The man nodded as much as he could.

Byron turned to Bill and said, 'This is our man..."

...as Jon's eyes began to tear up. He whispered, "Please don't hurt her. She's just a little girl. Please—"

"She's exactly what I want," the creature said, her mouth inches from the girl's throat. "And this is exactly what your father will have to do to keep from dying. Because he's one of us." Her head shot forward and her fangs punched into the pale little girl's flesh.
 

Jon swallowed several times to keep from throwing up and closed his eyes, but he had to watch; he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
 

Blood oozed from under the creature's mouth and dribbled over the girl's neck; the girl didn't move, just stared blankly upward, mouth open, chest hitching. The creature's entire body moved fluidly as her mouth sucked. Her hands wriggled over the girl's body, stroking her face and hair and arms and—
 

—the creature froze. Stiffened. She lifted her head slowly, mouth open and dripping the girl's blood. Her eyes rolled lazily and her hands closed into fists as she sat up suddenly, holding the girl tightly in her arms. Her eyes were wide, mouth gaping, and then—
 

—she screamed. Her wings lifted and spread with a great rush of wind. Her scream cut through the air like a dull razor, growing louder and louder as she rose jerkily, her body writhing, and she turned, arms rising above her head as her scream became even louder and more piercing and—
 

—the little girl began to scream, too, her voice mixing with the awful squall as the creature turned and—

—dove toward the back of the trailer, scream rising, and slammed through the closed doors, wings spreading even further once she was outside and airborne. Her scream faded into the night as her wings carried her away with great leathery flapping sounds.
 

The two young women in the trailer pressed their backs to the wall, one standing straight, the other hunkered in a squat. They stared at the open doors with fearful eyes, trembling, the blond wringing her hands as she stood, the girl in the ski cap not moving at all. They seemed not to notice Jon at all.
 

Jon stood slowly, staring at the two women one more time. They were still staring at the open doors. He turned and headed quickly out of the trailer, running into the darkness.
 

An instant later, the two girls exchanged a confused glance, the blonde hissed, "
Shit
!" and they both jumped out of the trailer after the boy...
 

CHAPTER 16

At the very moment Jon dashed from the open trailer, Kevin's battered white Dodge pick-up was creeping farther and farther away from the truck stop, its headlights only barely cutting through the heavy snowfall; the chains on the pick-up's tires rattled and crunched over the deep snow on the road that had not yet been reached by the overworked plows.
 

Amy was pressed against him, one hand stroking his thigh—up and down, up and down, her fingers moving closer to the bulge in his crotch each time—and the other toying with his earlobe as she whispered promises to him, telling him of the things they could do together, the places they could go and all the things he could have now that she was with him.
 

Kevin had panicked when they were caught fooling around in the basement. He was sure he'd lose his job and probably have a hard time finding another one; Yreka was a small town and word traveled fast. But Amy had calmed his fears quickly.
 

"You don't
need
a job anymore," she'd said. "You have me. We're gonna take care of each other."
 

Although he had no reason to, somehow Kevin believed her. Her voice comforted him and he found himself wanting to stare into her eyes; her very
presence
made him feel better.