The Traveling Vampire Show (44 page)

Still on her feet, backing away from me, she got it with a third arrow. This one caught her high on the left side of the chest, just over the heart. Her left breast jumped. Unsteady now, she raised her arms for balance. Only a couple of inches of the last arrow showed. She looked as if she had a strange, feathered broach pinned to the skin of her chest.

Waving her arms, she fell. She landed with a splash and lay spread-eagled on her back in the mud.

I stared at Valeria. She twitched and shuddered. Blood poured out of her wounds, but was quickly washed away by the rain. When she stopped moving, I looked toward the cage door.

Nobody there.

Stryker and the others must’ve run when the arrows flew. Probably to their bus. It was stopped about twenty-five feet away, its engine running, its headbeams bright in my eyes.

The cage door was shut.

Lee, conscious now, was braced up on her elbows. Except for her shirt, she was naked. Her shirt was mostly off. It covered her left shoulder, and that was about all. Face scrunched, she scowled through the rain at Valeria’s body.

“You okay?” I called to her.

She looked at me, frowning. “What happened?”

“I guess Slim happened.”

“Jeez.”

I hurried over to the sodden rag of Lee’s shorts and snatched them out of the mud. They were white in front, filthy in back. I turned them over and the rain sluiced off some of the dirt.

When I got back to Lee with them, she was on her feet and leaning back against the bars. I handed the shorts to her. “Thanks,” she said. She shook them open. As she raised a leg to put them on, I turned away and tried to spot Slim.

I figured she must’ve shot her arrows from somewhere under the bleachers where I’d been sitting earlier. Because of the headlights on me, though, I couldn’t see very well into the darkness. If Slim was crouched beneath the bleachers, I sure couldn’t see her.

I could see through them, though. To the back of the BEER-SNACKS-SOUVENIRS shack, to the area that had earlier been crowded with parked cars and trucks. There, all the headlights and taillights were gone. The field was dark except for the thin, moving beams of six or eight flashlights.

Stryker’s crew.

Apparently unaware of what had just happened in the cage, they seemed to be checking on the abandoned vehicles and other things they found interesting in Janks Field.

“Damn,” Lee said.

I looked at her. She was bending over, shoving the shorts down her legs.

“What’s wrong?”

“Can’t get ’em on.”

“Huh?”

“Too tight.” With a kick of her right foot, she sent the shorts flying. Then she ran toward the other side of the cage. She slid to a stop, bent down and plucked Valeria’s red leather skirt out of the mud. Stepping into it, she said to me, “Try the door.”

I hurried over to it. There was no handle. I grabbed the bars and shoved. The door rattled in its steel frame and stayed shut.

On the other side was a hasp and a padlock.

Groaning, I turned my head. “We’re locked in!”

Lee came running over. The red leather skirt was so short it hardly covered her groin. She’d straightened her shirt, but only fastened one button, down near her belly.

“Let’s see,” she said.

I stepped out of her way. Lee studied the situation, then reached through the bars, grabbed the lock and jerked at it.

“Oh, boy,” she muttered.

“What’ll we do?”

“I don’t...”

“Hey!” Slim’s voice. It seemed to come from the area of the bleachers.

Lee and I both started to turn.

“Don’t look.” She sounded a little strange, her voice tight like someone talking through pain. “They’re in the bus. Probably watching you. Fiddle with the door or something.”

We turned again to the cage door.

“Locked in?” Slim asked.

“Looks that way,” I said.

“It’s a combination padlock,” Lee explained.

Slim didn’t say anything.

“You still there?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe you’d better go get help,” Lee called.

“Nice outfit, Lee.”

“Thanks.”

“Red becomes you.”

“You’d better get going,” Lee said. “Try to get the police out here....”

“Not a good idea. I need to keep you covered.”

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Okay enough. Took care of Valeria, anyway.”

“You sure did. That was great shooting. But what’s wrong?”

“I’m a little beat up, that’s all.”

At first, I thought she meant her earlier injuries... those from the dog and falling down.

“I got worked over a little,” she said.

“What?”

“Bitsy. She jumped me from behind.”

“Bitsy?”

“Yeah. Clobbered me with something. Then she beat the crap out of me. Turned out my lights.”

Through my rage, I felt confusion. “When did she do it?”

“A few minutes after we left you guys. Guess she wanted to ‘go with.’ ”

“That creepy little ...!”

“She adores you, pal.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, suddenly glad that Bitsy had gotten herself pounded by Rusty. If I’d known what she’d done to Slim, things would’ve gone a lot worse for her.

“Seen her around?” Slim asked.

“Yeah. She said you got mad and told her to F off.”

“Real nice.”

“Anyway, we sorta ditched her in the woods. Haven’t seen her since.”

“So where’s Rusty?” Slim asked.

“We don’t know. They took him away after Valeria bit him.”

“She bit him?”

“After he made it with her.”

“Huh? Rusty made it with Valeria?”

“Yeah.”

“You mean sex?”

“Yeah. Right in the cage here. In front of everyone.”

“Holy jeez.”

“Then she tore into him. Next thing you know, they were taking him away on a gurney. We don’t know where he is now.”

“Maybe in their bus or something,” Lee said.

“They were gonna give him back to us,” I explained, “if Lee went five minutes with Valeria. That’s how we ended up like this.”

“Looked like she was about to take a piece out of your neck.”

“Thanks for saving it,” I said.

“Hey, it’s my favorite neck.”

I blushed.

“You still have the knife?” Slim asked.

The knife?

I slapped the front right pocket of my blue jeans and felt a solid bulge. Slim’s folding knife?

I couldn’t believe it.

I’d forgotten I had it.

“Take it out,” Slim said.

I shoved my hand into the tight, wet pocket of my jeans. No wonder Lee hadn’t been able to get her shorts back on. Something about wet cloth... But I managed to shove my hand in deeply enough to grab the knife.

I pulled it out.

“Now come over to my side of the cage. Make it fast.”

I wanted to ask why, but didn’t bother. Whatever her reasons, they were probably good. As I’ve mentioned before, Slim had more brains than me and Rusty put together.

So I whirled away from the door and rushed across the muddy floor. Through the bars on the other side, I saw a vague shape squirming on the ground in front of the bleachers. It had to be Slim belly-crawling toward the cage.

Suddenly, an engine revved.

Slim scrambled up. Rushing the final few feet to the cage, she entered the headbeams. Her short blond hair was matted and curly with rain. Her black silk shirt, torn in several places, was clinging to her body. She had her bow in one hand and her quiver of arrows in the other.

It felt great to see her.

But she had a gash above one eyebrow and her face was swollen.

I felt like killing Bitsy.

A moment before slamming against the cage, Slim shoved her bow and quiver of arrows through the bars. “Trade,” she gasped.

“Huh?”

The bus was on its way. Though I didn’t look at it, I heard it going through its gears, picking up speed like a school bus after dropping off a load of kids.

“Take my stuff! Gimme the knife! Quick!”

I did as she asked.

“Protect yourselves,” she said. Then she put her face between two of the bars. “Kiss me.”

Valeria’s words exactly. This time they came from Slim and the sound of them hurt my heart.

I dropped to my knees and kissed her on the mouth, forgetting about her puffy, split lips. She winced. I started to pull away, but her hand caught the back of my head. We continued to kiss. I felt the warmth of her lips, the heat of her breath. I tasted her blood.

The brakes of the bus groaned.

Though I didn’t look, the sound told me that the bus was stopping somewhere near the front of the cage.

Slim pulled back. “I love you, Dwight. Don’t let yourself get hurt, or I’ll have to kill you.”

“Oh God, Slim.” I had a catch in my throat.

“See you.”

“What’re you gonna do?”

She tugged open the blade of the knife. “Tell you after I’ve done it.”

I heard the familiar hiss of a bus door opening.

“Run!” Lee yelled.

In a low crouch, Slim rushed for the bleachers.

A big man sprinted in from the side at an angle to intercept her. He was my guard, the guy I’d elbowed in the nose.

As he chased Slim, I heard the bus engine roar. I glanced toward the sound and glimpsed the bus racing backward as if to put a safe distance between itself and the pursuit.

Just in front of the bleachers, Slim flopped to her belly and squirmed forward.

“Leave her alone!” I yelled.

The man didn’t even so much as glance at me.

He was about to leave his feet for a dive at Slim when I let an arrow fly. I was no expert archer like Slim, just a normal American kid of my times... a kid who’d done plenty fooling around with all things lethal: knives, firearms, blowguns, home-made spears, explosives, swords, bows and arrows.

My arrow went in just under the man’s armpit and sank into his ribcage. He hit the mud skidding.

Slim scurried under the bleachers and vanished.

Bleachers I’d thought were empty.

From somewhere near the top, however, came applause. It sounded like one or two people clapping their hands.

My skin went all crawly with goosebumps. I couldn’t see who was up there, but I knew anyway.

As I peered toward the top of the bleachers, the beam of a flashlight reached up through the darkness, swept this way and that, and found two men at the very top of the stands—found them for an instant, then lost them as they lowered themselves behind the structure.

“Look out, Slim!” I yelled, getting to my feet “The Cadillac twins! They’re coming after you!”

She didn’t answer.

The beam of the flashlight lowered and whipped back and forth through the lower rows of the bleachers. Shadows jerked and leaped. I looked for Slim, didn’t see her, then turned my head to find out who was holding the flashlight.

Its beam came from a cluster of three or four people standing just outside the door of the bus. The bus had stopped about twenty feet back from the cage. Not very far, but the people were in darkness and I had headlights shining in my eyes so I couldn’t tell who they were. Stryker was probably one of them, though. And Vivian.

I turned in their direction, readied an arrow and drew the bowstring back to my chin.

“Shut off the flashlight or I’ll shoot!” I yelled.

The light went dead.

“Thanks,” I said. A dumb thing to say, but it came out before I had a chance to think. “Now come over here and let us out.”

“Why would I do that?”

Before I had a chance to think about it—much. anyway— I released the arrow. It vanished into the darkness. Then came a quiet thump.

“Ah!” a woman cried out. A dark figure broke away from the group, hunching over and twisting away, then dropping to its knees. “You fucking bastard!” yelled the same voice. It didn’t sound like Vivian, but I’d noticed earlier that Stryker had several women in his crew.

I reached down to the quiver clamped between my knees and pulled out another arrow. Before I could shoot it, though, my targets had disappeared inside the bus. They’d left the wounded one on the ground, writhing and whimpering.

“That’s two down,” Lee said. “Three, counting Valeria. Not bad.”

“Except they’ve got us trapped and surrounded.”

She shrugged one shoulder. “Big deal.”

I laughed and so did she. As she came toward me, I slipped the arrow back into the quiver.

When she hugged me, the quiver fell over. But I didn’t care.

My shirt had been ripped off by Valeria, so Lee’s chambray shirt was the only thing between me and her skin.

“You’re doing really well,” she said into my ear.

“Thanks.”

“I always knew you were a good guy, but you’re even better than I thought.”

“Well... I’m trying.”

Her arms tightened around me. The way she was standing, I figured she could see the bus over my shoulder. And I could see the headlights of the truck over hers. If anything started to happen in either direction, we would know it.

“The thing is to stay brave,” she said.

“I’ll try.”

“Me, too.”

I let out a sad little laugh. “And we don’t have to worry about Slim.”

“Huh?”

“Staying brave. That’s the least of her problems.”

“I just hope she’s careful,” Lee said.

“Yeah, me too.” Then I started to cry.

Lee stroked the back of my head. “It’ll be all right,” she whispered. “She’ll be fine.”

“I don’t know,” I blubbered. “If anything happens to her...”

“It’s okay, honey. It’s okay.”

I kept crying, Lee holding me and stroking my head.

“You know what?” she asked. “It’s like you said when Valeria got shot. ‘Slim’ll happen to them.’ ”

I sort of laughed and sobbed at the same time. Then I mumbled, “God, I hope so.”

Lee stepped back slightly, moved her face in front of mine and looked me in the eyes. To me, she looked blurry. As I blinked, she wiped the tears and raindrops off my face with her fingers. All that touched me were her fingertips and breasts. It would’ve been very sweet and exciting if I hadn’t felt so scared.

After a while, she asked, “Feeling any better?”

I nodded. “A little.”