Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 02 (20 page)

“I know. It’s just that you both seemed so willing to give up.” She glanced off toward the lights of downtown Butte. “Maybe Wendy should have come.”

Ouch. I won’t lie. Those words bit into my cold dead heart like an unwelcome memory. Much like when I’d seen them arm and arm. Or when they’d been chatting while stacking body parts like firewood. I wanted to tell her that Wendy wouldn’t have bothered to come even if she didn’t have a hole the size of a cantaloupe in her gut. That she would’ve eaten the girl if any of us had turned our backs. But no. Because I’m a good friend, I bit my tongue. Not off, mind you.

“Wendy doesn’t like this kind of stuff. If there were a party she’d have been all about it.”

Gil glowered. I chased off his judgment with a sneer and a hiss. He clucked his tongue and swung the Volvo door open. I put my arm around the girl and led her to the car.

“We’ll find an answer. You’ll see Kimmy, again. And you won’t have to die to do it. I promise.”

She met my gaze. “You promise?”

“I promise. Now get in there and let’s get back into town.”

Honey hopped into the backseat with a bit more spring than I’d expected. Maybe I had some maternal instinct, after all. You’d think Ethel would have stripped any of that away cleaner than the flooded pit mine behind us. But, maybe I wasn’t so much my mother’s daughter. I mean. I’m not my mother’s daughter. That’s what I mean. If I could just stop measuring my life against that dying woman’s, that’d be great.
¹⁰⁵

“You’re going to have to mend this shit between you and Wendy.” Gil flipped down the visor and picked at his canines.

“Why is it my responsibility?” I asked as I pulled out of the Berkeley Pit parking lot.

“Um. ’Cause you’re the one being a bitch.”

“How’s that any different than any other time?”

He slapped the visor closed and turned toward me. “Because it’s directed at Wendy. You’ve been bitchy this whole trip. Bickering. Snapping. It hasn’t been pleasant, I can tell you. You’re not fooling anyone, you know?”

Honey’s eyes avoided mine in the rearview mirror. “I’m not?”

“No. This is all about your mother. Admit it.”

“Maybe it is. But I—”

“Just take care of Wendy. If you’re not up to it, I’ll take care of your mother when the time comes.”

“You’d do that?”

“Sure. I’m one of your best friends, remember? The other one’s waiting for some relief from the tension.”

I reached over and squeezed his hand, a rare tender moment between two friends plotting a dying woman’s murder. It warms the cockles.
¹⁰⁶

Wendy and Fishhook were playing cards when we found them. Through the window of the RV, I could just make out his snorting laughter, between slurps of a Big Gulp. As we approached, I could see what had him so elated. Wendy’s upper lip was coated with a swath of blood. The effect was not dissimilar to a bad Sam Elliot mustache, if he were a flesh-eating cannibal or enjoyed marinara in an altogether unhealthy way.

“That’s attractive.” I plopped down next to Fishhook.

“Body.” She sucked the last bit of gristle from her teeth. “It does a zombie good.”

“How’s it working its way through?” I pointed to her stomach and the hole.

“Not good. I’ve had to rig up a little system.” Wendy slid from the booth in a labored steady manner, opened her ratty western shirt to reveal a jerry-rigged poop bag attached to her severed intestine with twist ties and hair scrunchies. “The gas station guy was really helpful.”

In more ways than one, I suspected.

I stood up and hugged her. “Oh, sweetheart. Let’s get back on the road. The next big store we find, we’ll patch you up good. I see where you’re going with that, though.” I pointed at the self-colostomy. It seemed to be doing the trick since the shopping bag was nearly full. Wendy held the crinkly plastic like a bowling ball-sized tumor. It was not at all cute. “Nice work. Really.”

“Shut up.”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, right.”

“No I’m serious. Sorry.”

“Okay.”

A quick phone call, 200-some miles and we located Scott in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Billings. The chain store seemed to welcome overnight camping and an armada of recreational vehicles was already moored around its atolls of light posts. Fishhook, who’d become a proficient driver and ad hoc member of the ghouly gang maneuvered the Winnebago into a space and I pulled in beside him.

Scott rang my cell phone as I did.

“We’re here. But I don’t see you.” I scanned the lot for the god-awful orange sports car.

“We’re near the front of the store.”

I opened my door and stood to get a look above some of the other cars in the lot. Despite it being nearly 10:00 at night, the store drew hundreds of customers. But there, near a corral of shopping carts, stood the hot ex-cop. Beside him the two decidedly luke-warm missionaries kicked the ground, their heads hung low.

“There you are. I see you. Be there in a second.” I waved and hung up.

Wendy watched me from the camper’s side window. I wondered if I’d shown too much excitement at seeing Scott again. I waved her out and grabbed my purse from between Mr. Kim’s legs, or within actually. He raised a transparent eyebrow, making me giggle.

“Honey? Wendy and I have some shopping to do, right after we talk to Scott about this whole shaman thing.” I wondered if the words were too flippant, then
added, “Which is totally my main priority. I’d like you to stay by the trailer.”

The girl pushed her door open and bounded off around the front of the RV. I heard a few raps, followed by the sight of Wendy slinking toward the door.

I’d expected Wendy to be a bit brighter, more effervescent. Despite all my friends being dead, I credited Wendy with expressing a certain
joie de vivre
. Even her killings are executed with gleeful and guiltless exuber-ance.
¹⁰⁷
Yet, when she rounded the back of the Win-nebago, she appeared sullen. Her shoulders curled in; her back was hunched—while unquestionably a high fashion pose, it did nothing when highlighting a grubby Dukes of Hazzard ensemble.

“I know what we’re going to do.” I slung my arm around her shoulders. “We’re going to do some shopping. I don’t have much hope for the quality, but if I can do anything it’s put an outfit together. That ought to cheer you up.”

She patted her stomach and scowled. “Not with this.”

“Oh that. I’ve got some ideas about that.”

And I did. Or at least I figured they’d come to me once we rolled through the automatic door.

Scott’s eyes prowled my body as we strode toward the men. He met my approaching gaze without apology and extended his hand to greet us. I wasn’t sure how to read the gesture. A business-like sexual interest? Horny yet gentlemanly? I shook anyway, half expecting to be pulled into his arms and ravaged.
¹⁰⁸

“Did you get what you were after in Butte?” He
attempted to shake Wendy’s hand as well, but she withdrew, turning her nose up as though she’d encountered bad meat.

“Not really. We got a lead on a shaman on the Crow Reservation that sounds promising, though.” I aimed my chin at the cultists. “How about you. Anything?”

Tad and Corey began to protest.

Scott waved them off. “These boys didn’t have anything to do with that girl’s murder, anymore than I did.”

“Oh … hold on.” I stepped away from him, pointed at my eyes with my middle finger and then at his, just like a movie I saw once.
¹⁰⁹
“I haven’t excluded you as a suspect either, Officer Scotty. I’m watching you.”

A half-smile arched at the corner of his mouth, which he then wet. “As I am you.” He paused, scanned my body. “But, these boys just don’t have it in ’em. You and I know what it takes. Just look at ’em.”

They weren’t particularly threatening—true—gangly-limbed and bad haircuts both. The two of them together probably weighed only slightly more than Scott, though muscle weighs more than fat, and don’t think I didn’t notice the ex-cop was toting some guns and I don’t mean the kind you shoot out of, except maybe that one,
you
know, the one that actually does shoot.

The one down there.

Only not bullets.

Jesus.

Am I rambling? I sound like a retard.

Anyway, the conversation continued.

“Granted. Tad and Corey don’t look like your traditional albino killers, but—”

“She was just pale, she didn’t have pink eyes or nothin’,” one of the guys said.

Scott glowered at the kid. “But?”

“But,” I reiterated. “That doesn’t mean they didn’t do it.”

“We’re bound—” one said.

“Shut up, Corey,” said the other, presumably Tad.

Even Wendy cocked her head at that remark. Until now, we hadn’t learned much of anything from the boys, simply assuming a wide range of possibilities as to their identities (I’ve made you a little list in the footnote; won’t you meander?).
¹¹⁰
So this remark caught
us off guard a bit and smelled suspiciously of witchcraft. I was intrigued and that’s a tough response for a human to get that wasn’t bound for my stomach. There’s that word again. Bound.

“What do you mean … bound?” Wendy stepped up. Her arm touched mine.

“Uh.” Corey looked at Tad, who only shook his head. “We’re not at liberty to say.”

“But not bound from saying so?”

“Huh? What?”

I simply nodded. Sometimes a quick play on words could trip up a hambone like Corey.

“We’re bound from doing physical harm, by the Maha,” he said.

“Why’d you tell her that?”

“Why’d you let me?”

“I didn’t. Wha?”

Back and forth they bickered until they realized we’d continued to focus on them, then they turned back, frightened. “You won’t tell will you?” Tad said, or it could have been Corey. I’d forgotten again.

“Not if you tell us who or what this Maha is,” Scott took on the stern look of a police officer shaking down an informant. The boys were instantly talkative.

“The Maha Durgha is our guru,” one said.

“She knows everything,” the other said.

“She probably knows we’re talking to you.”

“She’s powerful.”

“She’s awesome.”

“Okay,” I interrupted. “Got it. She’s a superstar.”

“She’d probably know how to fix the girl’s problem. Help her see the ghost,” said Tad, we’ll say, for the sake of time. In fact, from now on, I’m just going to use
their names arbitrarily, because honestly, does it really matter?
¹¹¹
The kid had won my attention, though.

“Can we talk to her?” I asked.

“No,” Tad said.

“Nope,” Corey mimicked.
¹¹²
“But maybe one of you could.”

“How so?” I glanced briefly at Scott, whose eyes had narrowed to suspicious slits. I knew what he was thinking. This was either a tactic to get one of us alone and do fun things with our severed appendages or a legitimate attempt to help. My instincts told me it was the latter.

“She’ll only accept one audience per month. It may have already happened this month for all we know, but there’s a fairly good chance it hasn’t. Honey can go with us to the compound. It’s not too far from here. We’d have her back by morning.”

Wendy laughed, but a sloshing sound echoed from her gut silencing her. She held what must have been her do-it-yourself colostomy bag until it quieted. I gave her a wink, mouthed, “We’ll fix that,” and turned back to the boy. “If anyone’s going it’s me. ’Cause, newsflash you little fucker …”—the boy flinched—“… we don’t trust you.”

“Okay, then. We’ll take you.”

That was easy.

“You’re goddamn right you will, right after me and my girl go shopping.” I reached around Wendy’s waist and led her into the discount store.

* * * 

We found some batting in the fabric section and after holding up a bag to Wendy’s midsection, decided on two and tossed them into the wobbly-wheeled cart. A few Ace bandages would hold it all in place, so we rolled off to Health & Beauty.

“Do you ever think about what binds us, Amanda?” Wendy rested her hand on the cart as we navigated the aisles.

“You’re getting philosophical on me or is this because of those boys?”

“I’m just wondering if the only connection we have is our food. Or this.” She gripped the cart and stopped walking, forcing me to do the same and raised her shirt to reveal the hole. Dark gray tendrils etched into the surrounding skin. The rot was escaping her insides and infecting the surface somehow. Maybe it was mold—I’d have to remember to get some Pine-Sol— or it could just have been the store’s horrendous lighting. Either way, I couldn’t stand looking at it for any length of time.

I scanned the aisle for witnesses, clutched Wendy’s hands and pushed them down, covering the source of our joint horror. “No, baby. Not just
this
. You’re like my sister. Gil’s our brother. Like family. That’s why we argue. It’s just banter.”

Her eyelids dimmed, but she nodded as we shuffled past pots and pans and through the linen department, where a grungy girl with a bad haircut was fondling terrycloth.

“It’s changing me, you know?”

“No. I don’t.”

“This hole. It’s letting the monster out. I can feel the need to eat all the time. I used to be able to control the hunger pretty well, but now it’s slipping away. We
call the bitten
mistakes,
but we all are … really.” If her eyes could produce them, she’d have cried.

I’d have cried, too. None of this was normal. We shouldn’t exist, at all. But what good was dwelling on the fact? We were here. Sure, Wal-Mart isn’t exactly living, but it was something.

“If you want to see it that way,” I said. “Even the humans are mistakes, then. This whole planet’s a mistake.”

Wendy stared holes into my forehead.

I looked away, plucked the bandages from the shelf and pushed off to makeup. “Come on. We’ve got work to do. Can’t spend all night sinking into depression, save it for drive time.”

She shuffled behind me. It really was just going to be a matter of fixing her up. There’s nothing like a makeover to change irrational thought patterns. At least that’s what Oprah’s taught me.