Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 02 Read online

  “That’s what Mr. Kim’s for, wake his ass up.” The gentle snores continued from somewhere other than the backseat, probably somewhere in the heater vents.

  “He can’t defend it if someone strikes. He’s clear for Christ’s sake.” Wendy crossed her arms, and sneered.

  “Who’s going to ’strike’ our car, Wendy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It was certain Madame Gloria had told her something. I acquiesced and trod off in the direction of the light. Gil was already moving, low and catlike. The light emanated from a smallish RV, obscured behind an overgrowth of wild rhododendrons. Gil pressed his ear to its side and held a finger to his lips. He was in hunting mode, which would have been arousing had we played for the same team. Well, actually, it was still arousing. Gil was sorta hot, ask anyone.

  “Someone’s in there. Definitely.”

  I sniffed at the air—my only useful hunting skill, truth be told. At first the only scent was pine, and bark, the wet rot of needles. Then something else snagged on the moist air. What I caught was familiar: coffee grounds, tobacco, sweat, piss, shit. Body odors, of a specific variety. “Homeless guy,” I said. “Probably mentally ill.”

  Gil nodded. He’d learned to trust my nose. His could tell you the vintage of any celebrity blood donation in production, while mine was only capable of detecting disgusting body fluids and psychiatric problems.29

  “Just knock.” I elbowed him in the side, causing him to flinch like a girl, forcing me to mouth that simile. Like a girl.

  He made a fist at me, dropped it and then shrugged an okay.

  After the third rap against the metal door, a quiet raspy sound came; it could have been, “Who there?”

  “Amanda and Gil,” I said. It didn’t really matter if the poor guy knew our names, he wasn’t going to make it out of this alive anyway. It’s a sad fact about our kind that you’re hopefully used to by now.30

  The door swung open. “Who?”

  First impressions are terribly important, don’t you find? I know I do. The trailer’s occupant didn’t. Clearly.

  The man was a tiny scrap of a guy and filthy—not unlike my feet—the dirt seemed ground into him, staining his skin in a way that was totally unsavory and obscuring any ethnicity.

  He blinked tired eyes. They adjusted and widened, fear welled up—though I can’t imagine what was frightening, other than the total mess that was my outfit. He made a quick attempt to slam the door closed. Gil intervened, his fingers getting crunched between the door and the frame. The air whistled as he cringed, sucked up the pain and jerked the door back open.

  Inside, the man fell back onto a ratty banquette, shook his head, as though shaking a flea loose from the rat’s nest on his head and busied himself arranging various objects on the faux-wood table before him, as though the exchange had never occurred.

  We climbed inside.

  The trailer was surprisingly cozy, albeit decorated in dingy shades of yellow and cream, the effect reminiscent of an oozy yeast infection. Somehow, I was certain Todd Oldham would have been either mortified or intrigued.31 What no one could stomach were the piles of dirty dishes on the lone countertop, which had become a battleground for a roach/fly war.

  I scanned the man’s collection. Weird stuff. Thimbles, fishhooks and safety pins, were lumped with doll heads, fingernail clippings, and Ziploc baggies of pop can tabs (the kind you’re supposed to collect to buy precious time for loved ones on dialysis machines, but never end up anywhere but the trashcan). He arranged them on cocktail napkins, lined up in a row of eight, and each imprinted with the words: Can Can Saloon with a tiny silhouetted dancer lifting her skirt— for the boys, presumably.

  His work was meticulous. Each item took up a prime location on the scraps of paper, thimbles to the left of doll heads, tabs under fishhooks, and so on. Not that there was any reasonable pattern at work.

  I slid into the booth opposite; Gil followed me in.

  “Whatcha doin’?” I pointed at the napkins.

  The man continued his business, sorting, shoving a thimble inside an empty doll head, and placing it back on the napkin. Repeating these movements with measured determination.

  “I … uh. I … uh. Sorting,” he whispered.

  “What was that?” Gil’s face was crinkled and registered more than a little concern.

  Clearly, the man was crazier than a shit-house rat, probably didn’t even realize we were there.

  “Do you live here?” I asked.

  “Seat under my bottom, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, you’re sitting down, that’s true. Does that mean you live here?” I put on my most charming smile, but the man didn’t look away from his task.

  Gil put his arm around me and pulled me so close I felt his lips against my ear. “I’m going to look for the keys to this rig. You take care of him.” He pulled back and winked. He slid back out and shuffled through the paper bags and other garbage that littered the aisle, heading toward the driver’s seat.

  I turned my attention back to the man. Who was looking directly into my eyes, a sly smile on his dirty lips.

  “They’re comin’, girl,” he said.

  “What did you say?”

  The man returned to his task, as though no exchange had occurred. Twirling a three-pronged hook between his dirty fingers.

  Gil jingled something from the front, and yelled, “Found them!” My eyes darted to the keys dangling from his fingers and then back to the vagrant, just in time to hear a gulp. His fingers were empty and fast, apparently.

  “Did you just eat that fishhook?”

  “I … uh. I … uh. Yes.”

  I couldn’t quite wrap my head around what had just happened. “Why would you do that? Why would you eat that?”

  The man just smiled, cracked lips opening to reveal teeth blackened with decay. There was a twinkle in his eyes though, a spark of knowledge that implied he knew a little bit more about what was going on than I gave him credit for.

  “You’re insane.” I snapped my fingers for Gil. “Get over here! This crazy fuck just ate a fishhook!” I turned back to the table. The man’s hands were creeping toward the napkins. I noticed that fishhooks sat atop five of them, instead of the seven that were left. “Did you just eat two more?”

  He smiled again, this time licking a thin trickle of blood from his chapped lips. Brown bubbles of saliva cluttered the corners of his mouth.

  “Did you hear me, Gil? We’ve got a problem here.”

  Gil stood next to the table staring down at the man, who in full, unobstructed view reached out, picked up three more fishhooks and popped them into his gaping maw. His head bobbed like a chicken as he swallowed the sharps down.

  “Well that’s that,” I said, holding up my hands as though turning myself over to the cops. I imagined the effects of chowing down on the human fishing line would not be pleasant. I’d be lucky to survive it and with no reapers around to play doctor, I certainly wasn’t going to risk it. “He’s all yours. I’m not going to chip a tooth on that shit, or snag my lips, or anything else, for that matter.”

  Gil frowned, but lunged toward the man’s throat, anyway, pulling back the filthy winter coat and exposing the grayed flesh underneath and scars—so many scars—all of them circular and dashed. Obvious.

  Gil gagged and let go.

  “Jesus! He’s barely alive. He’s been used so many times.” He pivoted and threw open the camper door. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  I reached over and pulled the jacket back, again. He wore no shirt underneath and the scars covered his neck and torso, as though he’d made the error of swimming in a moray eel’s nest. The man had been around vampires; that was certain. He’d probably been driven insane by their feeding, escaped, and retired from service out here where no one would look, let alone bother to camp. He looked away as my eyes took in the abuse of his body.

  “Well, buddy.” I shut his jacket, patted his shoulder and slid out of the booth. “Today’s your lu
cky day.” Although, it wouldn’t be if any of those hooks shredded his insides, or maybe that would constitute a lucky day for someone who’d lived through such a trauma. Then, to Gil, “Did you try to crank this piece of crap?”

  “Unh uh. Here.” He tossed me the keys. His face was even paler than normal.32

  I left the old guy to sort the remaining objects and took a seat behind the wheel. The camper cranked right up on the first turn. I could see the Volvo through the windshield. Beams of sunlight were filtering through the trees.

  “You better find a place to sleep, back there. It’s about that time.” I watched as Gil wandered through the RV opening cabinets and two doors in the rear. One led to a bedroom that would be bright and sunny due to the large window at the back, the other led to a toilet/shower combo that after giving it a shocked look and a glower, he wedged himself into it and locked the door behind him. I think he even cried himself to sleep, or at least that’s what I’d tell Wendy, later.

  27 Reapers: the supernatural world’s cleaning crew. They fix all the little messes that could expose our presence (but only in larger metropolitan areas where they can extort the most money from a side-business of zombie healing). Nasty little bitches.

  28 Suck circles: A group of vampires (sucks, colloquially) that get together for conversation about books, film, and music, and not, as you presume, some dirty blowjob party. Why must my readers have the filthiest minds?

  29 Useful skills? Some would say yes. Crime scene investigators, dogs, certain therapists.

  30 And if you’re not, please try to keep up with the rest of the class. You’re dragging down our scores. Thanks.

  31 Todd Oldham: Fashion/Interior Designer. In love with kitschy retro in a totally unwholesome way.

  32 Pretty pale considering he got no sun, and had developed a sensitivity to bronzer.

  Chapter 5

  The Inexplicable Allure

  of Cowtown Couture

  Several very fashionable boutiques have begun to cater exclusively to our otherworldly population, in fact, just this week former supermodel Giallo opened EMACIATED in the new veiled area by Pioneer Square. Her goal, to provide budget-breaking couture to the skin and bones set, is a smashing success …

  —“Fashion victim” column, Otherworld Weekly

  Fifty miles east of Green Gulch, Fishhook—as I’d christened him—snored himself awake, staggered up the aisle and plopped down in the passenger seat. I hadn’t really thought about him since we pulled out of that moldy excuse for a campground. As it was, I had the Winnebago sailing down the other side of the pass—careening might be the more accurate verb—so he really was taking his life in his own hands just by moving around—of course, no more so than sharing your veins with a herd of thirsty vampires.

  At that thought, I glanced his way, in what I hoped was an expression of empathy.33 He responded by ripping the wettest fart I’d ever heard, a massive gelatinous ass moan, that woke a gag reflex in me that I thought I’d lost with my death. He gave me an exaggerated wink in response. The bastard.

  “Jesus Christ! Did you burn a hole through the seat? Open a window! Gawd!”

  His laughter was a stutter of grunts, and I soon realized why. With every inch the window cranked down, the air molecules seemed to have bonded with shit. We’d rolled into a cloud of methane gas that could easily power a small island nation. The fucker knew it was coming, too.

  His laughter became deep and rolling and I, in turn, began gagging and shouting, “Shut that fucking thing before I puke.”

  “I … uh—”

  “I … uh nothing, asshole. I know a lame joke when I see one … or smell one.”

  The man nodded, grinning wildly and showing off those pearly blacks. The smell dissipated slower than I’d like but anything was an improvement to full exposure.

  Crazy ass got back up and shuffled back to the table where I’d first seen him.

  What are we going to do with him?

  At the very least, he was going to need as much of a hosing down as this camper, to be at all presentable.

  We rolled into a small college town called Ellens-burg, where cows seemed to outnumber the human population by a mile. The stockyards were the first evidence of the place and they stretched from the freeway to the distant hills, a sea of shit, sectioned off by gridlines of fence post and barbed wire.

  The town itself was straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, if good old Norm had been caked in shit and three beers shy of a nasty cirrhosis. A mid-sized college kept the population stocked in taverns and cheap restaurants, poverty chipped in on the thrift stores. Lucky for me, visiting parents require moderately habitable hotel rooms or I’d have nowhere to freshen.34

  I pulled into a newish motel called the Round Up—which, if I’m not mistaken is also the name of a weed killer. Wendy parked the Volvo next to the camper and waited for me in front of the office.

  “You stay right here. You understand?” I leveled a glare and my index finger at the freak, and then reached down into his fishhooks and thimbles and mussed it up. He gasped and waved his hands over the rolling debris, and then busied himself reassembling his collage of crazy.

  “That ought to keep you busy,” I said.

  I opened the door and let in a burst of air thick with bovine butt funk. I gave the man one last threatening sneer and slammed it behind me. At the far end of the parking lot, a scruffy-haired youth traded balancing on his skateboard for falling on his ass. The stink didn’t seem to bother him.

  “Why, might I ask, would anyone choose to live in this hellhole?”

  Wendy shrugged nonchalantly. Too nonchalant for my taste. The day Wendy doesn’t have a snide comment, is the day she’s hiding something. This, I suspected, was that day. When she finally looked me in the eye, I saw a thin streak of brown below her lip that couldn’t be anything but the gooey, sweet and creamy afterbirth of … wait for it … chocolate.

  “Oh, honey,” I said.

  “Hmm?” Her brows rose in genuine interest, or so it would seem.

  “What’s that on your lower lip? Are you trying out a new liner?” I prodded.

  “Huh?” Wendy scraped the chocolate with the point of her nail and examined the roll of brown that clung there. The evidence. “Aw shit. Alright, already. You know it’s chocolate. Of course, it’s chocolate. What else would it be? Why do you have to do that?”

  “Do what?” I raised my palms to her, horrified. Had I committed a social faux-pas?35

  “Be so goddamned critical all the time. It’s called an addiction, okay?”

  “I … uh …” I didn’t know what to say. One of the few times I’d been at a loss for words. Wendy stomped off down the sidewalk knocking on each of the motel doors along the way. She did so love to disturb the humans. “Sorry!” I called after her.

  She raised a fist in the air, then flicked up her middle finger. She knocked on the last two doors and then turned the corner toward the back of the building. As she did, the frazzled guest in the second room down, stuck his head out, a question mark where his face should have been. “What the fuck!” he yelled.

  I pointed out the skateboarder, watched him launch off toward the poor kid in his loose-fitting boxers and bare feet, and ducked into the manager’s office, just as the man unleashed a torrent of expletives on the unsuspecting youth.36

  With Wendy off sulking somewhere, I had no choice but to rouse Gil from his eternal slumber. I banged on the door to the dirty camper john, and yelled, “Gil! Wake up! I need to talk!”

  “Wha-wha?” His voice slurred like a dementia patient’s.

  “Wendy and I had a fight.”

  “So?”

  “So? Help me get over it?” I leaned against the door and kicked the bottom with the toe of my shoe.

  “Stop that racket. You know I’ve got to sleep.”

  “C’mon. What should I do?”

  “Jesus. Apologize?”

  “Why do you assume it’s my fault?”

  Sile
nce.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Isn’t it?” he sighed.

  “Shut up and go back to sleep already.” I turned and examined Fishhook.

  With the vagrant and nothing but four “budget beige” walls to occupy my mind, I was left with no other choice than to give him a makeover. I stood in the camper doorway eyeing the biohazard. His hair was shoulder length and ratty, starting on the top and working its way around his mouth like a dirty mohair scarf. What skin left exposed was ruddy and dry to the point of flaking. And the clothes—Christ—too tattered to salvage. Thank God for American Express Black; re-imagining Fishhook’s persona was going to cost a fortune.

  “I … uh …” he whispered. Because that’s all he ever seemed to say, except for those comments.

  They’re comin’, girl.

  My first thought rushed to the vampires, those gluttons that fed from the poor guy so liberally. But it was daylight, and there was no way they were following, right now. Then I wondered if he could be referring to Markham and his werewolves. But how could he possibly know about that? We didn’t even know that, for sure. I suspected Markham was on our trail, but I hadn’t seen any proof. Madame Gloria hadn’t mentioned it, and, honestly, wouldn’t she have? I thought back to the moment she spoke to Wendy privately and a strange theory batted its way into my brain.

  Maybe she was in on it. But, she’d led us to a safe place for Gil. Didn’t make sense.

  I was getting completely fucking paranoid.

  I shook off the fog of thoughts and eyed my quarry. This time he was responding to my visual assessment and seemed to know he was looking down the throat of a bored zombie with a keen fashion sense. For a crazy guy, he seemed to put together the puzzle pretty well. He reached up and brushed his beard into a point, loosing food debris and at least one cockroach that dropped to the table and scuttled through the grid of doll heads and buttons, taking refuge in a toppled thimble.

  “Oh yeah.” I nodded. “It’s project time.”

  Fishhook flinched.