Lot Lizards Read online

  "I don't need to travel with anyone. I've done fine for a year."

  "Then why have you followed us?"

  "To...to stop you."

  It laughed. "Stop us? From doing what we must do? What you must do, as well?"

  "No," he said, his voice low as it came through clenched teeth. "No, I don't kill. I don't hurt anyone."

  "Then you will die!" the voice said happily. "You will grow weaker and weaker until you cannot move. And you will whither away. Surely you're feeling it already, aren't you?"

  "No."

  "Mmm. You don't lie well. You feed on animals? Or perhaps you steal the blood. From hospitals, I suppose. Many have tried that. The weak ones always do at first, the sentimental ones. But they soon learn that it is not the same. They grow weak, then ill. They learn something. You will learn it, too. Unless you feed on living humans, unless you drink warm blood still pumping through human veins and arteries, you will die. It is a wonderful way of weeding out the weaklings. Survival of the fittest, and all that. So. If you are not hunting, I do not believe that you are in good health." It laughed again. "You're dying already."

  Bill looked at Jon, who seemed to be staring at something far in the distance; he seemed unaware of everything around him.

  "Why was this done to me?" Bill asked.

  "A mistake. It happens. It cannot be undone. You accept your situation or you don't. Which shall it be, Mr. Ketter?"

  "Let my son go."

  Bill saw the shadow-like shape of a long slender arm stretch out toward him in the darkness.

  "Come to me first."

  The black claws were smooth and glistening. The long boney fingers, skin flour white, beckoned gracefully.

  "Dad?" Jon whimpered, as if he'd just awoke from a bad dream. "Dad? What's...what're you—"

  "It's all right, Jon. Everything's all right." He tried to smile at his wide-eyed son, thinking that whatever was to come would be far better than watching Jon die. He stepped forward cautiously, nodding slowly, saying to the creature, "Okay. Fine. I'll come to you. But you've got to let my son—"

  The enormous man appeared at the other end of the trucks, arms raised above his head, both hands clutching a yard-long winch bar. It remained suspended there for an instant, just long enough for light to sparkle on the chrome. Then it started downward.

  The creature moved in a blur.

  Bill cried out, "Nooo!"

  Jon released a terrified, confused scream that was cut off instantly as he was pulled into the darkness and out of sight.

  The milky white arm swept up, long fingers wrapped around the black man's wrist and he screamed, dropping the winch. It clattered to the ground behind him and he was pushed backward; he hit the pavement rolling through the dirty slush, grunting painfully until he slammed into the rear tires of a truck across the aisle.

  "Not nice, Mr. Ketter," the creature hissed. "I've changed my mind." The creature swept around the back of the trailer in a whispering haze of darkness and Bill heard the door slide up with a rumble.

  Feeling numb with fear, he stumbled forward as he heard Jon's cries cut short when his thin body tumbled into the trailer.

  Bill rounded the trailer and looked into the square of blackness in which he could see, very faintly, a pale, hideous face, inhuman, with a glistening, grinning snout full of white needles.

  He froze.

  "Your time is running out," the face rasped, a thin pink tongue flickering behind the fangs. "You are growing weaker. You are becoming ill. You'll die soon. For good. You are no longer a threat. You are...a pity."

  The door slammed down with a metallic explosion and then—

  —the night was silent except for the wind that blew curtains of snowflakes in white swirls.

  Bill's teeth crunched as they ground together. His fists clenched until his nails dug into his palms. He heard a low growl rising from his chest and—

  —he threw himself against the trailer's door, his fists pounding the metal, echoing like thunder on the other side as he screamed incoherently. He grabbed the latch and jerked on it, throwing his whole weight into the effort. In a moment, he collapsed to his knees, weakened and trembling, his head hanging between his shoulders, chin pressed to his thin chest.

  Behind him, the black man groaned as he climbed to his feet.

  And a soft, sniffling voice whispered, "Bill? Buh-Bill, is...that you?"

  Only when he lifted his head did he realize there were tears in his eyes and his stomach was hitching spastically, more from nausea than sobs. He looked over his shoulder to see A.J. standing a few yards away.

  "Bill?" she said again, just a breath this time.

  He nodded jerkily.

  For a long time, they just stared at one another as the snow fell...

  CHAPTER 12

  Although it was a busy night at the truck stop, no one responded to the screaming and shouting in the back lot. The wind had picked up considerably and the night was a white blur of snow; the engines of both cars and trucks blended into a constant idling thrum and people at the gas islands had to shout to one another to be heard above it all. Even those who did hear the agonized screams of Bill and Adelle Ketter had other things on their minds...

  Delbert Terry had been kicking back in his sleeper, huddled beneath blankets, warmed by his heated bed pad and reading a Louis L'Amour novel as he made his way to the bottom of his second can of barbecue flavored Pringles. One of those late night talk shows was on his radio and when he tired of reading, he'd listen to the lamentations of faceless Americans who had called the show's toll free number. He was more than willing to forego a hot meal and coffee inside the crowded noisy truck stop; he preferred the quiet, warm solitude of his sleeper. Besides...

  ...he was horny.

  The knock on the cab came just as a woman on the radio began to sob because her white upper middle class daughter was pregnant by and in love with a black man who had just gone to prison for selling drugs.

  Delbert smiled and put down his book, flicked the radio off and called, "Yeah?"

  No response.

  He tossed the blankets aside and got up. "What?"

  "Want some company?" A small, thin voice. Young.

  Delbert liked them young.

  He opened the sleeper door and looked down at the small girl bundled in a heavy coat. She smiled up at him, her face pale, eyes heavy with a sexy, sleepy look. Delbert leaned out, offered his hand and chuckled, "C'mon up, honey."

  She was light as a feather...

  Lumpy Turner met his company for the evening when he returned to his truck after dinner. She was leaning against his fender smoking a cigarette, apparently unaware of the snow and biting wind, tall and slender with a face like a movie star— a little on the pasty side, but damned fine—and lips that set Lumpy's imagination racing.

  "What can I do you for, missy?" Lumpy asked with a grin, knowing what he wanted to do her for.

  When she spoke, the wind whipped smoke from her mouth violently: "You can start by opening up and letting me in."

  "Fine by me, honey," Lumpy laughed, fishing his keys from his pocket...

  While Lumpy Turner was taking his clothes off, a young-looking girl was wandering through the maze of trucks in the back lot. She moved casually, wearing jeans and a dark sweater that showed off her curves, hands clasped behind her back. She had red hair that framed her face in full, bouncing curls and waves. Her name was Victoria. She approached a truck that had a sticker on the door of the sleeper. The sticker showed a picture of a green lizard; around the lizard was drawn a red circle with a slash through it. Beside the circle was written NO LOT LIZARDS. She read it and chuckled before knocking on the door. There was movement inside and the door opened. A fat man, probably in his late fifties, wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, opened the door and smiled down at her.

  "Want some company?" Victoria asked.

  He shook his head slowly. "Didn't'cha read the sticker, honey?" he asked gently. "I don't do that sorta thing. I'm a Ch
ristian."

  Victoria grimaced. "Fine."

  The man nodded, waved and, still smiling, closed the door.

  She moved to the next truck, knocked on the door and, when the man opened the door, he smiled and said, "You look cold, baby. You wanna come inside?"

  She nodded and he reached down to help her up...

  At that very moment, Joe Grimes was kneeling in his sleeper behind a girl on her hands and knees, both of them naked; Joe was clutching her long hair in his fist and sweating as his hips thrust forward again and again and again and he whimpered as the girl reached back between her legs and ran her fingernails over his swinging balls until she pulled away suddenly, rolled over and pulled him down on top of her growling, "In me, inside me now," as she wrapped her slender arms and legs around him and pressed her cool wet mouth to his throat...

  And in a truck in another part of the lot, Warren Philpott lay on his back in his sleeper, trying to lift his head between the legs of the girl lying on top of him, but finding himself growing weak and dizzy and, oddly enough, nearing orgasm as the girl ground her mouth against his groin, making loud wet slurping sounds...

  Each of them heard some or all of the incident that took place between the two Carsey Bros, trucks, but they heard it only vaguely. Their minds were on other things.

  By the time the truck stop was plunged into utter blackness, Delbert Terry and Lumpy Turner and Joe Grimes and Warren Philpott, as well as many others on the lot, were unconscious and bleeding. All of their money and everything of value that could be removed from the cab were gone...

  As the pale, young-looking girls prowled the back lot, knocking on cab after cab and offering companionship, Claude Carsey woke with blood in his eyes and reached up slowly with a trembling hand to wipe it away, but another hand—cool and small—took his wrist gently and pulled it away. A soft cloth dabbed at the blood, clearing it away until his eyes fluttered open and—

  —in a fit of panic, Claude flailed his arms and legs, trying to back away from the girl as he made little huffing sounds of panic but his back was pressed against a stack of wooden crates and there was nowhere to go.

  "You get your—don't you tuh-tuh—you keep away from me!" Claude sputtered in a high voice, slapping the girl's hand away.

  She backed away, giggling. "Just trying to help," Amy said.

  Claude's head throbbed and blood still dribbled from the wound on his forehead, but the pain was eclipsed by his revulsion at being touched by the girl...by one of them. Simply being so close to one of them made him shudder. He struggled to his feet, looking around, but the room spun and the floor tilted and he slid back down the crates onto his ass. He held his head between both hands and groaned, "Oh... oh, God... oh..."

  Amy squatted down before him, clasped her hands between her knees, smiling. It was a big smile that showed her fangs. "Not feeling too well, Mr. Carsey?"

  The smile didn't fool him. He knew she hated him. They all hated him. They hated Phil, too. But they needed both of them, so the truck drivers were tolerated. But only barely. Sometimes he saw the way they looked at him, the way they watched him when they thought he didn't notice, and those looks haunted his sleep...what little he got.

  Claude wanted out. He'd wanted out so bad for so long that he couldn't remember why he'd gone along with the whole thing in the first place. It was sick and, worst of all, deadly. And for the money they got from the girls' little late night excursions in one truck stop after another, it certainly wasn't all that profitable considering the fear that came with it all. Fear of his own brother as well as those...things. The constant fear.

  And now he was here with Amy, probably the worst of them all; there seemed to be something different about her, something...restless and angry.

  "Go away," he said, his voice hoarse. "Get away from me, just go away."

  "Sorry, but—" She shrugged, raising her brows helplessly. "—we're kinda stuck here, you and me."

  "What? Where? Where are we?" He tried to get up again but the dizziness showed him back to his seat.

  "In the basement of the restaurant. I think. Don't quote me."

  "Well... I gotta go. I gotta get back to—" He was about to say he had to get back to his brother before Phil got pissed—Phil was pissy all the time, but when he really got pissed, death became a nice thought and Hell seemed like a vacation paradise—but something occurred to him. Maybe he shouldn't say anything. Maybe Amy was chummy with that guy who'd chased him and had, apparently, put him in this dark chilly place. After all, he—whoever he was—was one of them. Maybe something was going on...something bad. Maybe they were planning something. That was a thought that frosted Claude Carsey's heart.

  He tried to relax, but couldn't and pressed his stiff back hard against the crates to get as far from her as possible.

  She only leaned closer. Smiling again. That sharp-fanged smile that was like an ad for Satan's very own brand of toothpaste. "It's just you and me, Claude. All alone. At least for a while. I got a friend now, see? Someone you don't know. Your stinking brother, either. In fact, none of you know him, including that fucking freak you cart around in your truck." Still smiling around the bile in her voice: "Somebody who likes me. He's gonna do things for me, Claude. And he's coming soon." She leaned very close, only inches from his face, and there was a smell...It wasn't her breath, because they really didn't have any breath; it was just a faint smell that sort of wafted up from deep inside her—the smell of old meat covered with spoiled preserves—and it made Claude's face screw up. "Then...when he gets here... I figure we can have a little fun. The three of us."

  Claude used to believe in God as a child. He'd gone to Sunday school and church with his parents and sung songs about Jesus. That had been a long time ago and the past few years had convinced him that there couldn't possibly be a God. But now Claude did something he hadn't done in over forty years.

  Claude prayed, and...

  ...as Claude Carsey anticipated his death—or perhaps, God forbid, something worse—Jon Ketter sat with his knees hugged to his chest in the complete blackness of Claude's trailer. He could see nothing, but he knew he was not alone.

  "You are afraid," the creature hissed. "You are trembling."

  Jon said nothing. He stared in the direction of the voice, but saw only solid darkness.

  "You should not be afraid." There was a smile in the voice. "I will not hurt you. Your father is the one I want. He should be with us. He needs to be with us. He will die alone. And he may expose us. But you... you are safe here. Don't be afraid." Jon felt a thin ice cold finger stroke his jawline gently and the tip of a claw run over his skin. The creature said, with a soft, feminine chuckle, "You are too old for me."

  But he was afraid. He could not move, couldn't even think. He just stared into the darkness trembling, his body crawling with gooseflesh and...

  ...Shawna Lake crawled with gooseflesh, too, as she stood at the living room window staring into the night. Grace Tipton was on the sofa doing a crossword puzzle as cartoons blared on the television. Moments before, Shawna had been seated in front of the television, legs crossed Indian style, watching Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. But her attention had been elsewhere; it had been on the knot in her gut, on the gnawing certainty that something wasn't right. She'd finally been drawn to the window, as if she might be able to look outside and see whatever was wrong, whatever was disturbing her.

  Mrs. Tipton joined her soon, touching her frail shoulder softly. "What's so interesting out there, Shawna?" she asked.

  Shawna shrugged, but said nothing.

  Mrs. Tipton hunkered down beside her, concerned, putting an arm around her waist. "Are you sure you feel all right, honey?"

  Shawna was frowning, her lower lip tucked between her teeth. "I'm not sick. If s just that...something's wrong."

  "What's wrong?"

  "I don't know!" Shawna snapped, more harshly than she'd intended, spinning to face Mrs. Tipton. Softly, she repeated, "I don't know. Really. But something... s
omething bad is wrong."

  Mrs. Tipton put her hands on Shawna's shoulders and said, "Listen, sweety, if you say something's wrong, then you must have some idea what. You're making me very nervous with this talk. You know, it could have something to do with your medication...the way you're feeling, I mean. It can do things like that, you know, just make you feel bad for no reason. Do you think that's it?"

  Shawna shook her head and opened her mouth to respond, but was shocked into silence when the lights went out and the house was swallowed by darkness and...

  ...the back lot disappeared when the power failed and Bill looked around in the dark, able to make out a few shapes: the long rectangular hulks of the trucks, the tall darkened mercury lights that stood like sleeping guards overlooking the lot and, deep within the maze, visible only now and then, petite, thin figures wandering around between the trucks.

  "Oh, my Lord, what is happening around here?" the black man shouted.

  There were other voices in the darkened lot, truckers grumbling about the outage, faint and whipped away by the wind, but none as loud or as filled with fear.

  Bill got to his feet, turned and spotted A.J. She was kneeling in the snow, both hands pressed to her face, watching Bill between her fingers; she was mumbling something into her palms, or perhaps just sobbing, as she shook her head back and forth, back and forth...

  She pulled her hands away slowly and whimpered, "Buh-Bill? Is thuh-that you?"

  He approached her uncertainly, trying to find his voice. "Yeah, A.J. It's me."

  She stood and headed unsteadily toward him, saying softly, "What's happened?" Moving faster, raising her voice: "What have you done?"

  Bill stopped.

  A.J. rushed him then, swinging her fists before she even reached him. She slammed into his body and began pummeling his chest, screaming, "What was that thing, that fucking thing where is Jonny, you sonofabitch, where's my Jonny?" She screamed on and on, hammering him, and Bill tried to stop her without hurting her but she began kicking his shins and knees then and it hurt—it really hurt—and he was just too weak for it, both mentally and physically. So he slapped her.