The kid lifted the teeth up for a closer look as he grasped his knife again. He shook the long blade at the Chattery Teeth like a teacher shaking his pointer at a naughty student. ‘You shouldn’t bite,’ he said. ‘That’s very bad behav — ‘
One of the orange feet took a sudden step forward on the grimy palm of the kid’s hand. The jaws opened at the same time, and before Hogan was fully aware of what was happening, the Chattery Teeth had closed on the kid’s nose.
This time Bryan Adams’s scream was real — a thing of agony and ultimate surprise. He flailed at the teeth with his right hand, trying to bat them away, but they were locked on his nose as tightly as Hogan’s seatbelt was locked around his middle. Blood and filaments of torn gristle burst out between the canines in red strings. The kid jackknifed backward and for a moment Hogan could see only his flailing body, lashing elbows, and kicking feet. Then he saw the glitter of the knife.
The kid screamed again and bolted into a sitting position. His long hair had fallen over his face in a curtain; the clamped teeth stuck out like the rudder of some strange boat. The kid had somehow managed to insert the blade of his knife between the teeth and what remained of his nose.
‘Kill him!’ Hogan shouted hoarsely. He had lost his mind; on some level he understood that he must have lost his mind, but for the time being, that didn’t matter. ‘Go on, kill him!’
The kid shrieked — a long, piercing fire-whistle sound — and twisted the knife. The blade snapped, but not before it had managed to pry the disembodied jaws at least partway open. The teeth fell off his face and into his lap. Most of the kid’s nose fell off with them.
The kid shook his hair back. His gray-green eyes were crossed, trying to look down at the mangled stump in the middle of his face. His mouth was drawn down in a rictus of pain; the tendons in his neck stood out like pulley-wires.
The kid reached for the teeth. The teeth stepped nimbly backward on their orange cartoon feet.
They were nodding up and down, marching in place, grinning at the kid, who was now sitting with his ass on his calves. Blood drenched the front of his tee-shirt.
The kid said something then that confirmed Hogan’s belief that he, Hogan, had lost his mind; only in a fantasy born of delirium would such words be spoken.
‘Give bme bag by dose, you sud-of-a-bidtch!’
The kid reached for the teeth again and this time they ran forward, under his snatching hand, between his spread legs, and there was a meaty chump! sound as they closed on the bulge of faded blue denim just below the place where the zipper of the kid’s jeans ended.
Bryan Adams’s eyes flew wide open. So did his mouth. His hands rose to the level of his shoulders, springing wide open, and for a moment he looked like some strange Al Jolson imitator preparing to sing ‘Mammy.’ The switchknife flew over his shoulder to the back of the van.
‘Jesus! Jesus! Jeeeeeee — ‘
The orange feet were pumping rapidly, as if doing a Highland Fling. The pink jaws of the Jumbo Chattery Teeth nodded rapidly up and down, as if saying yes! yes! yes! and then shook back and forth, just as rapidly, as if saying no! no! no!
‘ — eeeeeeEEEEEEEE — ”
As the cloth of the kid’s jeans began to rip — and that was not all that was ripping, by the sound — Bill Hogan passed out.
He came to twice. The first time must have been only a short while later, because the storm was still howling through and around the van, and the light was about the same. He started to turn around, but a monstrous bolt of pain shot up his neck. Whiplash, of course, and probably not as bad as it could have been . . . or would be tomorrow, for that matter.
Always supposing he lived until tomorrow.
The kid. I have to look and make sure he’s dead.
No, you don’t. Of course he’s dead. If he wasn’t, you would be.
Now he began to hear a new sound from behind him — the steady chutter-click-chutter of the teeth.
They’re coming for me. They’ve finished with the kid, but they’re still hungry, so they’re coming for me.
He placed his hands on the seatbelt buckle again, but the pop-release was still hopelessly jammed, and his hands seemed to have no strength, anyway.
The teeth grew steadily closer — they were right in back of his seat, now, from the sound —
and Hogan’s confused mind read a rhyme into their ceaseless chomping: Clickety-dickety-clickety-clack! We are the teeth, and we’re coming back! Watch us walk, watch us chew, we ate him, now we ‘II eat you!
Hogan closed his eyes.
The clittering sound stopped.
Now there was only the ceaseless whine of the wind and the spick-spack of sand striking the dented side of the XRT van.
Hogan waited. After a long, long time, he heard a single click, followed by the minute sound of tearing fibers. There was a pause, then the click and the tearing sound was repeated.
What’s it doing?
The third time the click and the small tearing sound came, he felt the back of his seat moving a little and understood. The teeth were pulling themselves up to where he was. Somehow they were pulling themselves up to him.
Hogan thought of the teeth closing on the bulge below the zipper of the kid’s jeans and willed himself to pass out again. Sand flew in through the broken windshield, tickled his cheeks and forehead.
Click . . . rip. Click . . . rip. Click . . . rip.
The last one was very close. Hogan didn’t want to look down, but he was unable to help himself. And beyond his right hip, where the seat-cushion met the seat’s back, he saw a wide white grin. It moved upward with agonizing slowness, pushing with the as-yet-unseen orange feet as it nipped a small fold of gray seat-cover between its incisors . . . then the jaws let go and it lurched convulsively upward.
This time what the teeth fastened on was the pocket of Hogan’s slacks, and he passed out again.
When he came to the second time, the wind had dropped and it was almost dark; the air had taken on a queer purple shade Hogan could not remember ever having seen in the desert before.
The skirls of sand running across the desert floor beyond the sagging ruin of the windshield looked like fleeing ghost-children.
For a moment he could remember nothing at all of what had happened to land him here; the last clear memory he could touch was of looking at his gas-gauge, seeing it was down to an eighth, then looking up and seeing a sign at the side of the road which said: SCOOTER’S GROCERY
& ROADSIDE ZOO GAS SANX COLD BEER SEE LIVE RATTLESNAKE’S!
He understood that he could hold onto this amnesia for a while, if he wanted to; given a little time, his subconscious might even be able to wall off certain dangerous memories permanently.
But it could also be dangerous not to remember. Very dangerous. Because —
The wind gusted. Sand rattled against the badly dented driver’s side of the van. It sounded almost like
(teeth! teeth! teeth!)
The fragile surface of his amnesia shattered, letting everything pour through, and all the heat fell from the surface of Hogan’s skin. He uttered a rusty squawk as he remembered the sound (chump!)
the Chattery Teeth had made as they closed on the kid’s balls, and he closed his hands over his own crotch, eyes rolling fearfully in their sockets as he looked for the runaway teeth.
He didn’t see them, but the ease with which his shoulders followed the movement of his hands was new. He looked down at his lap and slowly removed his hands from his crotch. His seatbelt was no longer holding him prisoner. It lay on the gray carpet in two pieces. The metal tongue of the pull-up section was still buried inside the buckle, but beyond it there was only ragged red fabric. The belt had not been cut; it had been gnawed through.
He looked up into the rear-view mirror and saw something else: the back doors of the van were standing open, and there was only a vague, man-shaped red outline on the gray carpet where the kid had been. Mr. Bryan Adams, from Nowhere, USA, was gone.
So were the Chattery Teeth.
Hogan got out of the van slowly, like an old man afflicted with a terrible case of arthritis. He found that if he held his head perfectly level, it wasn’t too bad . . . but if he forgot and moved it in any direction, a series of exploding bolts went off in his neck, shoulders, and upper back. Even the thought of allowing his head to roll backward was unbearable.