The Boat (30 page)

Mindy reached across the seat and grabbed at Gater’s hands, scratching him by accident across the back of his wrist. There were tears glinting at her lower lids. In her fright, she looked about half her age–a grade school kid again. Gater was feeling kind of like a little kid, himself, and it made him angry. He sat up, pulling her with him.

“Christ, it’s probably just Terry and them, trying to scare us. Probably rode out here on their quads. Fuckers.” He squinted out into the woods, looking for any sign of the four wheel ATVs, but could see very little. The Barrens were dense with trees and underbrush. The sandy ground glowed in ghostly patches in the blue-black night.

“We’d have heard them if they were on their quads,” Mindy said, her voice a shaky whisper. She wouldn’t look out into the woods, afraid of the twisted and deformed trees she catches in her peripheral vision. Like monsters surrounding the truck. She kept her eyes on Gater.

“Yeah. But they might have parked a ways back and walked up on us. Douchebags.” He had gripped onto the idea that Terry and John are fucking with him, but even before ‘douchebags’ is out of his mouth, he tries to remember if he told anyone he was bringing Mindy out here tonight.

Mindy was right, they would have heard the high-pitched quads–that distinctive, buzzing whine of the ATV engines–if they’d been anywhere close by.

“Did you tell anyone we were coming out here?” he asked and Mindy shook her head, blinking.

“Just my mom,” she said, as tears overflowed her lash line and coursed down her cheeks.

“Okay, okay, take it easy, we’ll just get the fuck out of here and–” he’d been turning himself forward, reaching for the keys dangling from the ignition while he talked. As his fingers grazed them, the truck bounced again, the back end seeming to come off the ground entirely, sending his face into the steering wheel and Mindy crashing sideways into the dashboard.

The truck bucked front to back over and over as though it had come alive, a demonic metal bull straight from the pits of some hellish rodeo. He turned to Mindy, dazed, and watched as she was flung between the dash and the back of the seat, her arms out to steady herself. She was screaming and her eyes were tightly closed, as if she were on a roller coaster. The glove box popped open and everything flew out. His owner’s manual, the insurance card, pens…Mindy screamed and screamed. He reached for her, yelling “Mindy, take my hands, hang on, Mindy–” but she kept screaming, trying to brace herself, getting purchase then slipping as the truck bounced and rocked.

Then she was looking at him, wide-eyed. “Your face, your face!” she screamed, and Gater felt the hot wetness that had burst from his nose, and with that realization, the pain set in. He knew right away that his nose was broken because he’d seen his friend Sean’s nose get broken once when they’d all been twelve. Sean had fallen into the handlebars of his bike. It had been bloody as hell, but he’d had been okay.

Just like I’ll be okay, Gater thought, soon as I get us the fuck out of here.

He reached for her, yelling over the screeching of the springs. “It’s okay, I think my nose is broken, but I’m okay! Hang on, hang on–”

Abruptly the truck stopped bucking. They froze, huddled together on the middle of the seat, instinctively bent low beneath the windows. Mindy’s eyes, red and teary and round with panic, were locked onto Gater’s face. She wanted him to fix this, fix this, get them out of here, she wanted her mom and her dad, she wanted her daddy to fix this…she wasn’t aware that she was saying ‘fix this fix this’ over and over, out loud. Like a chant. An incantation.

“Mindy! Be quiet!” he said, his voice low and choked. The fear–the terror–in his voice silenced her. She became aware of a chuffing, breathy sound somewhere behind the truck, almost like a laugh. But there was no humor in it. There was another chuff, deepening to a moan, from the front, and then an answering grunt from the back.

Mindy’s arms rashed out in goose bumps.

Like a conversation, Mindy thought. They’re talking to each other. But what the hell–

Gater’s eyebrows pulled down and he tilted his head–she knows he hears it too and is just as puzzled by it. Then her eyes stray past Gater to his door, and she sees that the lock button is up. Strong, cold hands squeezed her stomach.

His door was unlocked.

She reached past him, fingers straining. She touched the lock with the tip of one shaking finger when the door burst open outward. She shrieked and threw herself back toward the passenger door, as Gater was pulled out the driver’s side door, bouncing and screaming, his mouth a black hole of panic. A half moon crescent of blood stained the edge of the seat where his chin hit it.

At the last second, his hand caught the steering wheel, his knuckles white with strain as he is pulled backwards. Mindy reached for him, shrieking in terror, but the wheels turn in the soft sand and the steering wheel twists abruptly, shaking him loose.

Mindy threw herself forward across the seat, still shrieking, reaching for where his hand had been a split second before. Gater was dragged along the sand into a dense stand of bushes, further into the dark. He was still screaming. His eyes were enormous with fright, the lower half of his face black and shiny with blood from his broken nose.

He reached for her with one hand while the other clawed helplessly at the loose sand.

He disappeared into the underbrush.

There was a crack, like a large tree branch breaking, and Gater’s scream was cut off.

She realized she was still yelling his name and she bit down on her lip, cutting her shrieks to breathy whimpers. She reached for the door handle. She had to lean way out, into the black night. The crazily disturbed swirls of sand glow whitely where Gater had been dragged into the tangle of bushes. Her shaking fingertips bumped the door and it sprang open farther, creaking, and she yelped in panic. Then her hand connected with the cool metal handle, gripping it, and she pulled roughly, throwing herself back across the seat. The door closed with a bang and she slammed down the lock button with a sob of relief.

She sat back, shaking, wrapping her arms around herself.

She listened.

Her eyes strained to see into the black woods.

Nothing. No noise, no movement. Her shaking began to subside. She looked to the ignition. The keys were still there.

Relief, like a cool washcloth on her forehead, calmed her racing thoughts. Okay, it’s okay, I can just drive out, get help for Gater, bring help back, get daddy, daddy can fix this…

She slid behind the steering wheel, checking the door lock again, compulsively pushing it down just to be sure. In her panic, the passenger side door slipped her mind.

Shaking, she reached for the key and turned it. The truck engine ground lifelessly. Unaware she is doing it, she laughed, even as fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. She shook her head in denial and turned the key again and from the engine, nothing but the low rurr rurr rurr of a dying battery.

“No…oh, no,” she said.

She let her hand drop from the key and closed her eyes, trying to compose herself. She couldn’t seem to get her thoughts ordered and she had to, if she was going to get out of this.

The night had gone quiet again…no wind, no frogs or crickets; just deep, untouched stillness.

She tipped her head into her hands, squeezing her eyes closed, trying to think.

The passenger door clunked and swung slowly open, creaking on its hinges. The chuffing sound rolled into the cab, seeming to run up her right side like a hot tongue, and she froze. Her eyes opened with reluctance and she stared blindly out the windshield, paralyzed with fear. The hair at the back of her neck rose.

She began to turn her head. The chuffing became a grunt. There was an answering grunt outside the driver’s side window.

It seemed to take forever to do this one little thing, to accomplish this tiny movement, to just turn her head and look…

But she did it. She finally got there.

And then she screamed.

The preceding was the beginning of
Born Lucky, The JD Chronicles, Adventures of a Reluctant Psychic

Available now. To keep reading, click here:

http://www.amazon.com/Born-Lucky-JD-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B006NZWQT4

Also Look For this Exciting New Release:

Blood Run, First Promise

Book One in the Blood Run Trilogy

It is 1985 and the United States is reeling from a disease that has taken huge, bloody bites out of the country as people are changed into vampires. The survivors have grouped together in remote outposts and the National Guard is the lifeline that runs between the outposts, bringing news and supplies.
In Wereburg, New York, a young woman named Destiny Riser has lost her parents in the plague but saved her little brother, Chance. But the outpost she brings him to is still young and learning and in an accident of fate, it is ravaged by vampires. Destiny sees her brother bit and changed and from that moment on, rechristens herself ‘Promise’ and vows to release Chance from his nightmare, nighttime existence.
With the assistance of her black horse, Ash, she combs the barren forests surrounding Wereburg and even her old development, Willow’s End, searching for Chance; desperate to end his misery. But then the National Guard brings a stranger to Wereburg, a man who is purportedly a fabled ‘half and half’–someone who has been bit but who has at least a partial immunity to the disease. That man will change everything that Promise believes.

Available Now! Click here:

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Christine Dougherty
is at home in South Jersey with her husband, dog, and two cats. Visit her at: www.christinedoughertybooks.com