NIGHT CRUISING (35 page)

The footsteps were
close now, just around the corner, coming to get him. If it was
Boots, by God, he'd have to kill the motherfucker, make him die a
second death. He

didn't care who it was.
Orson. Edward. Minde. Riaro. The screaming fat man with the diamond
ring. The cowboy with the baseball bat, the woman in the Pick 'N
Save, the truck driver.

Lannie.

Daddy.

Didn't care. Had to
stop the creeping footsteps.

And then a man with a
crew cut, bearing a tire iron before him, stepped into view.

#

Molly didn't know what
happened. One minute Cruise was genial and trying his best not to
frighten her, telling her about desert spoons and coyotes, and the
next minute he had his hand around her mouth, crushing her lips
against her teeth.

She fought to get free,
adrenaline racing, heart pounding, thinking this was the end, but the
more she tried, the harder he held her. Then she felt the blade of
the knife cold against the blood throbbing at her throat and she
turned to stone; she couldn't have moved had she wanted.

With her eyes wide
searching back and forth for some way out, she saw him come around
the corner not four feet from where Cruise held her in the vise of
his arms.

Her father.

#

Mark came to the
intersection with a stealth he thought undetectable. He did not
expect to move beyond the wall and look to his right and see Molly
imprisoned in the arms of the man. He almost dropped the tire iron. A
weakness born of relief at seeing his daughter alive attacked his
arms and legs in successive waves. The weapon wavered unsteadily in
the air just above shoulder level. Her name fell from his lips.
"Molly."

That's when it all went
out of control. There was a flurry, the man moving faster than his
vision could track, and he tried to keep Molly in view, saw her go
down, flung aside, hitting the rock wall, crumpling to her knees with
a cry. The man came at him holding out one arm as if he carried
something in it, but Mark couldn't see anything, just a closed fist.
A fist, nothing up against the tire iron, nothing to stop him from
dropping the man to the ground.

He swung, strength
returning from the place it had scampered, and imagined he hit the
larger man, but knew a second later he was wrong, he hadn't touched
him. How could that be?

How could it be that he
felt the arm holding the tire iron loosen of its own accord and fall
at his side like a mannequin's arm? The tire iron dropped against his
knee, fell onto his right foot.

Mark looked down, then
up, and the man was moving away from him down the canyon street,
turning into another intersection, disappearing from sight.

Molly appeared next to
him, a daub of darkness--blood?--on her forehead. She threw herself
on him, but he could not get his right arm to work, couldn't get it
up to hold on to her. When she stepped back screaming, the darkness
dripping from her hands now, he realized finally that he was wounded.
Badly.

He reached up with his
left hand and touched his right arm where he saw now a river of fluid
that soaked him. Jesus God. The muscles of his upper arm were slashed
to the bone. Blood pumped over the lip of the slash and covered his
hand the moment he touched open flesh.

He grunted and went to
his knees. "Molly...Molly..."

She was frantic,
crying, making gibbering noises. Gone crazy.

"Molly! Tear up
your shirt. Tie it around my arm, make a tourniquet. Quick!"

He felt light-headed.
He began to sway on his knees. He said again, "Molly, hurry."

She rushed to him,
tearing at the shirt she wore, ripping it from the neck across the
shoulder and down the side. He hung his head wondering how he was
going to get them out of the maze of rocks if he couldn't get back
his strength. It left him with each pint of blood that streamed down
his useless arm.

He barely remembered
hearing the screech of tearing cloth, the painful clutch of her hands
as she wrapped the shirt around his upper arm above the cut and began
to tie it off.

He felt along the
ground with his left hand for the tire iron. Goddammit, where was it?
Why was everything so goddamned fuzzy and unreal? The ground was a
mile away, his hand elongated as the rubber fingers felt along the
rocky earth, his head spinning. He slumped into his daughter's arms
as he passed out. His last thought was,
I'm going to brain that
bastard for this.

#

It was too much work to
cut the intruder a second time. He knew he had opened his arm with
one slice, and that should be enough. Let them both die out here from
exposure for all he fucking cared. He was taking the truck and
leaving. Right now.

He stood at the cab,
feeling in his pockets for the key. Where was the fucking key?

He had the knife in one
hand and that hindered the search. But the knife was bloody. His hand
was drenched. His arm. One of the legs of his slacks.

Shit
. Couldn't
stand the blood. Needed to bathe. Needed some water. Left it in the
trunk of the Chrysler.

Shit.

Where was the key to
the truck? What had he done with it? He had to leave now.

#

Molly tied off her
father's bleeding arm, caught him before he fell, and lowered him to
the dirt. She put her hand to his heart and felt the beat. He could
live. He needed a doctor soon, but he wouldn't die if... She stood
up, shaking.

Where was...?

The truck! If Cruise
took it, she might never get help in time to save her father from
death.

He couldn't take it.
She wouldn't let him.

She grabbed a strip of
her torn shirt and tied it around The Nubs.

She picked up the tire
iron where her father had dropped it and stalked down the canyons
toward where they had left the truck parked.

Daddy had done all that
he knew how.

Now it was up to her.
Oh yeah, it was up to her now.

#

In his agitated state,
Cruise didn't remember that he had never taken the truck keys from
the ignition. They dangled from the keyhole in the cab while he spent
valuable time feeling his pockets, not believing the key wasn't
there, and feeling the same pockets over again like a man who is
being lied to by his senses.

His arms were jumping
and throbbing, live wires jolted by bolts of electricity. He had to
do something soon, soon. Take off his shirt, that's what he had to
do, get the bandages free. Then he'd find the key and leave the bitch
and the man behind.

He broke open the front
of his shirt, buttons popping, some of them pinging off the metal
door of the truck. He shucked out of it, and began immediately to
tear at the bandages over his arms. He felt the wounds weeping great
bloody tears as the last of the cloth slipped free and was thrown
onto the ground around his feet.

He dropped the knife,
sick of the slippery feel of it in his hand. He caught his arms with
both hands, pushing, pulling at the flesh as his chest heaved up and
down like an engine pushed to the limitation of its power.

Had that been Boots
back there trying to ambush him? He wasn't sure. How could he be
sure?

Had he really struck
Boots a killing blow and ripped open his arm?

Fuck, fuck, he hadn't
wanted to do that, not to the only friend he ever had.

#

Molly came into the
lane where the truck was parked and sneaked behind where Cruise stood
tearing at himself like a madman, his back to her.

She didn't pause to
reflect on what she was about to do.

There was no turning
back.

She had been left no
choice.

Cruise felt the blow
glance off his collarbone with a sharp crack that seemed to explode
his eardrum. He howled and went to his knees from the impact. Bone
fragments drove into his muscle and scraped against open nerve ends.
He rolled onto his back, hands up to his chest like a man having a
heart attack. His scream echoed off the rock face.

He saw Molly bending.
He saw her leaping onto him. She straddled his middle and in her hand
glinted the knife blade.
His
knife!

He tried to turn aside
as she fell forward, both hands clasped around the knife hilt. The
blade slashed into the tender area between shoulder blade and arm. He
threw her off and groped for the knife.

A growling that rose
like a hundred wolves baying at the moon made him crouch, the found
knife clutched in his hand. He turned his head, listening. It was
coming across the desert from the direction of the highway.

What?

Molly had sprinted away
during the scuffle. He didn't even see in which direction she went.

His attention came back
to the sound coming off the desert.

What?

He got to his feet,
every movement a torment as bone and muscle tore and ripped at him.

It sounded like an
earthquake. Even the earth beneath his feet shook to the
deep-throated rumble.

He hurried down the
street to the closest exit. He had to get away, get out of the City
of Rocks, make his escape before disaster was able to bring him down.

#

Molly wept at not
killing him. She leaned against a rock wall, clinging to it with her
fingernails. When the sounds came she knew what they were and her
heart rejoiced.

She began to run for
the nearest exit from the City of Rocks.

#

Mark came to, his head
trembling slightly against the hard ground. He didn't know what the
sounds were but he had to find out.

He had to find Molly.
He had to save her from the killer.

He had to get to his
feet and make it to the nearest exit from the City of Rocks.

#

Cruise saw them coming
for him as he ran jagged lines across the desert floor. There must
have been dozens of them, could have been a hundred for all he knew.
Headlights shining across the plain from the shaggy heads of
monsters. They came from across the desert in a single sweep, side by
side, bearing down on him, skirting the City of Rocks, closing ranks
again, coming straight for him as he limped and staggered, his hand
over the gaping fracture and the hole in his flesh where the knife
had sunk. Miniature tornado trails of dust plumed behind the tons of
metal bearing down on him. The trucks broke through mesquite trees
and lumbered over ruts and hillocks of sand. They flattened cacti and
came on, relentlessly, trailers banging across the land behind the
cabs.

He ran as far as he
could, as fast as his legs would carry him, and he knew it was not
enough.

He stumbled to a stop
and turned to face them. The headlights swarmed and surrounded him,
forming a perfect circle. He growled deep in his throat, a cornered
animal. Then they came to a standstill, engines lowering to idles,
and from the cabs of the semis dropped men with mallets and baseball
bats and guns and knives and lengths of pipe.

Cruise began to smile.
A mob of determined men. He had always known that about them. Hoping
they'd never find out it was a fraternity he had long abused.

They'd caught him. And
so it goes. He'd get off some way. They'd send him to some
institution, know he was crazy. He'd make sure they knew that.

Even if they sent him
to prison, he wouldn't stay long. Sooner or later he'd be out.

Fucking truckers
thought they had won.

They just weren't as
smart as Cruise Lavanic.

#

Molly came behind the
trucks, racing as hard as she could.

She saw her father off
to her right and veered toward him. Together they hurried across
hummocks and around squashed cacti and broken mesquite.

"What are they
doing?" she yelled at her father over the harsh roar of the
combined engine noise.

He shook his head and
hurried on. He held his bad arm to his side to keep from jarring it
as he ran.

They reached the back
of a trailer and moved down between two of the trucks. Cab doors
stood open. They had to close one to get past it and into the magic
circle of lights.

What they saw stopped
them both cold. From their vantage point they saw Cruise standing in
the center of the men. He was naked from the waist up, bleeding from
his shoulder, blood streaming down his chest. Both his arms looked
notched with cuts that ran with blood. The front of his slacks were
blackly wet. He was grinning like a death's- head, his freshly shaven
face gleaming with sweat in the glare of the headlights.

He was bragging to the
advancing men. His voice carried above the trucks' motors.

"Any of you pricks
heard of Minde? M-i-n-d-e? Lot Lizard out of Charlotte, North
Carolina. She's off your hands for good. I buried her deep in the
woods. What about Connie outta El Paso? Heard of her? You want names?
I know names, faces. Never forget them, never do. There was a girl
called herself Cupcake, ever hear of her? Haven't in a while, have
you?"

The silent circle
grimly advanced, tightening, drawing closer around Cruise. The men
gripped their bats and pipes. They took the safeties off their guns
and socked clips into place with hard metallic bangs.

"Molly back there
behind you. Molly, I almost did. She was one of my best ones. I kept
her around too long, though, didn't I? Sweet kid, but lots of
trouble, let me tell you, she was real trouble."

He couldn't stop
talking, couldn't get his mouth closed for nothing. He knew he
shouldn't be saying anything, that he was egging them on by what he
said, but the words simply kept coming, refusing to stay unspoken. He
hadn't this many witnesses in all of his life, and it was too good a
chance to pass up.

"I sat up during
the hours when Molly slept and watched her, fantasizing about what I
was going to do to her. I had it in mind to kill her here at this
special place. If you hadn't all come, if Boots hadn't..."