The Skunge (2 page)

He fell backwards, his cock purple with trauma, and landed on his ass. He lay there, fighting for breath, staring as her leg pendulumned in diminishing arcs above him. Steam wisped from her skin as she surrendered the last of her heat to the frigid air. Mik gasped and mewled, rolling on the floor. Skin stared down at Katrina's corpse, face blank as unlined paper. The camera hummed to itself, satisfied, red light winking like a hellish cyclopean eye.

CHAPTER TWO

The rusted out Mustang rocketed down the highway, creaking and groaning with every curve and pothole. Skin drove like a maniac. Rain bucketed down, sluicing over the windshield, smearing it into a gray blur. At every bump in the road, Mik screamed in pain.

Christian looked back. Mik lay across the back seat, shivering with pain, sweat pouring down his face. He held both hands jammed between his legs, covering the raw red mess of his crotch.

Skin hit another pothole, throwing Mik an inch off the back bench. He slammed back down, and sprayed puke with a belching cry. Brownish-green chunks of partially digested food spewed across the back seats. With every convulsive heave, he howled like a dying animal.

"Shut the fuck up!" Skin shouted from the front seat. The pistol, still splashed with dried blood, lay on his lap like a crucifix. Christian stared at it, almost looking forward to the inevitable car crash that would jettison them headlong into the cemetery.

The rain rattled against the Mustang's windows. Christian's window leaked, and cold air wormed its way inside and down his collar. They struck another bump, and the car shook as if suffering a
grand mal
seizure. The wind howled with morose fury and Mik returned its cry from the back seat.

"We're lost," Christian said. The stink of of Mik's sick and Skin's increasing mania closed in on him until he thought he would choke. He lit a cigarette and puffed hard, filling the car with clouds of smoke. "We are so lost."

"The fuck we are. This is the same road he brought us in, it'll take us out. Isn't that right, Mik, buddy?"

Mik answered with another howl, and Skin giggled, a high-pitched manic sound that seemed too loud in the rattling confines of the car.

"You turned at least twice. If you knew where you were going, we'd already be there." Christian asked. He held the cigarette clamped in one corner of his mouth, and his right hand gripped the door handle hard enough to turn his knuckles white.

"I know where I'm going," Skin said. He drove with one hand, the other holding the pistol.

Christian fell silent. Images of Katrina played through his mind on a grimy film loop. Her eyes, innocent China blue, just before the bullet smashed through her brain and sprayed it all over the dirty floor of the schoolhouse. He vowed to himself that if...no,
when
he got out of this mess, her death would mean something. Anything. He would remember her. Like a portent, an orange sodium light, almost lost in the gloomy torrent, startled him out of his reverie.

"There!" He rubbed at the glass, peering into the driving rain. "There's a town. Turn here, turn here!"

"The fuck I'm stopping here. We're going to Wichita." Skin spoke through smoke and gritted teeth.

"We can find a place to take Mik. Come on, man. He's hurt bad." Christian lowered his voice. "What if he dies? What would we tell the cops. Just stop, please?"

Skin sneered, but turned into the town.

The town was a nightmare of leftover black-and-white TV shows. Gray buildings skinned with shitty plastic siding, rotting brick, boarded windows like blind eyes. Lifeless grass the color of dirty sheets grew around abandoned playground equipment scabbed with rust. An abandoned train station slumped at one end of town like a forgotten place of worship.

"What a shit-hole," Skin said.

Christian caught a glimpse of a dark figure standing at a window, half-hidden by yellowing curtains. There was something wrong—indistinct—about the figure, like a hastily drawn silhouette. He looked away, feeling his skin prickle. A little girl, no older than seven, sat on a crumbling curb clutching a kitten to her ragged coat. Her knees and elbows were grass-stained.

"Stop there," Christian said. "We can ask for a hospital, or a clinic. "He checked the back seat. Mik lay, chest barely moving, mouth hanging open. His skin had gone slate-gray.

"This is stupid. We should just drive through to the city, I'm telling you." Skin scowled out of the windows.

"And what about Mik? What if he dies in the back seat?"

Skin sneered. "If he dies, he dies."

Christian brought his hand down on Skin's arm and squeezed, hard. He leaned in close, making full eye contact. "Stop. The. Fucking. Car." For a moment, he feared Skin would laugh in his face—or worse, reach for the big gun on his lap. But he only stared back a moment and then grinned his ugly, wolfish grin.

"OK, big man. But just so you know: no one lays hands on me. Especially a homo."

So he knew then, that Christian was gay. There was nothing to be done for it, now. "Whatever. Just pull over."

They stopped next to the girl. Christian rolled down his window and grimaced at the rain. "Hey Princess. Our friend is hurt. Is there somewhere we can take him?"

The girl looked at him as if he had suddenly sprouted two heads and spoken Hindi. She cocked her head. "What's wrong with him?"

"Do you have a doctor here?"

"Not for him. Not for you." She rose to her feet and skipped away. The cat hissed at them over the ragged shoulder of her coat.

A couple of thugs sauntered over to the car. They bore scruffy mustaches and faces spotty with adolescent acne. One of them sported a large black birthmark that crept up from under his t-shirt to stain the side of his neck. They both wore sunglasses.

"What do you need here?" the shorter of the two rasped. He sounded like a lifelong smoker in the body of a teenager. "Nothing here for you, go back to the city."

"We're looking for a hospital. Our friend had an accident, and he needs a doctor."

The short one bent to peer into the back seat. "Some accident." The insectile lenses of his glasses reflected Christian's pale, drawn face. "Better get back to where you came from, before anything worse happens." He smirked, displaying teeth like a rotting picket fence. "No doctor here." They chuckled like trolls as they walked away, moving slowly, like they might decide to come back any moment. As they turned the corner, something caught Christian's eye. His blood froze.

A paper, affixed to the wall, flapping in the wind. It featured a picture of blond girl with good cheekbones and big, mournful eyes. Underneath, a number to call if you saw the girl, and one word. MISSING. Christian had seen her. Two hours ago, at the bottom of a hole, splashed with grave-dirt, being buried an inch at a time. He imagined calling the number, and calmly, with no embellishment or artifice, explaining what had happened to Katrina. He would name Skin and Mik, and then disappear. He would run, as far and fast as he could, and try to forget.

But no, it would never work. He had signed papers, rental agreements for Mik. Skin's credit, of course, was nonexistent. Christian's name would be pulled down into the same dank gray hole that now hid the body of the girl.

"I told you this was a shit-hole," Skin said. He grinned and crunched a stale French fry from an old grease-spotted bag. He gunned the engine and threw it into gear. Christian watched the rear-view mirror, convinced the teenagers would turn around and give chase. Mik groaned piteously from the back seat. As they left the curb, Christian saw the shadows of the two teenagers change, melting into writhing shadows. He blinked, sure that the rain had tricked his eyes.

Like a miracle, through the rain, a flashing red cross. "There." Christian pointed. He felt something loosen in his chest. Things were going to be OK. They could drop Mik here, and leave for Wichita. Mik would have objected, but this was his insane plan to begin with, and he could deal with the aftermath.
No longer my problem—
the words washed over Christian like a balm.

Skin skidded to a halt in front of the building. Christian jumped out. The frigid rain sent freezing rivulets down the small of his back, and the wind threatened to knock him over as it gusted. He scrabbled at the rear door handle, and when he opened it, Mik almost slid out to the ground. The front of his jeans was a red mess, his face slack and empty.

"Help me, you asshole," Christian gritted at Skin, trying to lift Mik. The guy was even heavier than he looked, and heavier still for being unconscious.

"Not my problem," Skin said airily, lighting a cigarette. "Besides, can't you see it's raining out there?"

Christian cursed and began to drag Mik inside. The flashing red cross cast glaring light over Mik's ashen face, turning him into a victim in an Italian horror movie. He whimpered as Christian dragged him up the steps.

He was trying to wedge open the door with his leg when he was startled by a blast from the Mustang's horn. "Hurry up, we're low on gas!" Skin shouted before winding the window up again. His laughing face was lost in the dirty cascades of water sluicing down the windows.

Christian felt like his head would explode. "Fuck you, you goddamn fucking scum!" He shrieked at Skin, and with a grunt, yanked Mik's body up the last steps. He fancied he could hear Skin laughing from the car.

"Wake up. Wake up, asshole." He chanted to Mik, dragging him into the dripping silence of the entryway. He laid him on the carpet, nudging Mik's boots onto the runner so they wouldn't drip filthy water on the tiles. The boots were caked with the wet soil of Katrina's grave, and he tore his eyes away before those memories could surface and engulf him. "Hello? We need help!"

The place was dim and silent, like something underground. An unpainted steel desk sat between two swinging doors. A couch, upholstered in hideous floral fabric, slouched low against the wall next to an end-table covered in a scatter of black and white magazines. A circle of yellow light pooled under a decrepit floor lamp.

He turned back to Mik. "Goddamn it, wake up and move." Mik grunted and broke explosive wind. Christian reared back. "To hell with this. Find your own way back to Wichita."

He turned to call once more and almost screamed at the two figures standing behind him. A woman, dressed in an outdated nurse's uniform, and a cadaverous man in an old-fashioned wrap-around lab coat. They stood, unmoving, not three feet from Christian. The doctor's glasses, fashioned from inch-thick yellowed glass, reflected back the lugubrious, flickering lamplight. Christian half expected eerie violin music to squeal and groan in the air, but the only sound was the drip of rainwater and his own impatient panting.

"My friend is hurt. Can you help him?"

The two only stared at him, and for a moment Christian was horribly certain they would begin to cackle madly and advance upon him. Instead, they shared a long, unreadable look. The glance was so fraught Christian could almost hear it in the gloom. Then the Doctor barked at the nurse, and she hurried forward. Christian back off a few steps and let them work, listening to their murmured conversation. They were husband and wife, apparently, and judging by their bickering they had been married for years.

He helped them load Mik onto an antique steel gurney, and watched as the nurse wheeled him through a swinging door with a smudged kick-plate. The room beyond was brilliant white. He turned to the doctor, and got a nasty shock. The doctor was grinning at him, and from much closer than Christian remembered. His eyes, under his green surgeon's cap, were dark and deep. Suddenly Christian was very eager to be out of the building, out of the office, and out of the town.

"Ah—will he be OK here, then?" Christian asked. He edged toward the door. "Do you need me to sign some papers, or..." The doctor said nothing, only examined him, grinning obscurely. A whispery sound emerged from beyond the swinging door, and Christian's heart began to hammer. The smile plastered on his face cracked like a mask. Something nudged him from behind, and this time he
did
scream. He whipped around. He had backed into the doors. He turned and fled, all thought gone from his mind, except the need to escape.

Out into the driving rain, and for a moment, he though the car was gone. Skin, already on his way back to Wichita, chuckling over his cigarettes at the thought of Christian stranded in this sodden backwater. He felt his vision wobble with rage, already half-convinced he would find the street empty.

The Mustang was there, smoking away in the needling rain. He slammed into the passenger seat and barked at Skin to drive,
drive
. Skin drove. They were on their way, screaming down the only road out of town.

Christian leaned back into his seat, feeling the adrenaline drain out of him, leaving cold wet exhaustion. A sign flashed by on his right. "Where did Mik say he picked up Katrina?" Christian asked, head craned to see out the back window. "Do you remember?"

"Some town called Nasana." Skin squinted at the radio, and started clicking around. Nothing but static. He clicked it off with a disgusted scoff. "Sounded like a real shit-hole."

Christian swallowed and said nothing. The bullet-holed, rusted signpost receding in the mirror read: Thank You For Visiting Nasana. Go In Peace.