• “A drunk driver could have done that,” he said. “I saw two bars already, and I haven’t even been looking.” A stupid idea, in her opinion, but she was getting to like hisTexas accent more and more.
Another bad sign.
“Come on, Steve, get real.” Coyote-howls rose in the night, counterpointing the wind.
She slid next to him again. “Jesus, I hate that. What’s with them?”
“I don’t know.”
He was creeping along at no more than ten miles an hour, wanting to be able to stop before he was on top of anything the headlights might reveal. Probably smart. What would have been even smarter, in her humble opinion, was a quick turnaround and an even quicker get- the-hell out-of-Dodge.
“Steve, I can’t wait to get somewhere with billboards and bank signs and sleazy used-car lots that stay open all night.”
“I hear you,” he said, and she thought: You don ‘t, though. When people say “I hear you,” they almost never do.
“Just let me check here-this one house-and then this burg is history,” he said, and turned into the driveway of a small ranch-style home on the left side of the street. They had come perhaps a quarter of a mile west from the inter-section; Cynthia could still see the blinker through the flying sand.
There were lights on in the house Steve had picked, bright ones that fell through the sheers across the living- room window, dimmer, yellowy ones shining through the trio of oblongs set into the front door in a rising diagonal line.
He pulled his bandanna up over his mouth and nose and then opened the truck door, holding on as the wind tried to rip it out of his hand. “Stay here.”
“Yeah, right, eat me.” She opened her own door and the wind did pull it away from her.
She slid out before he could say anything else.
A hot gust pushed her backward, making her stagger and grab the edge of the door for balance. The sand stung her lips and cheeks, making her wince as she pulled her own bandanna up. And the worst thing of all was that this storm might just be warming up.
She looked around for coyotes-they sounded close- and saw none. Yet, anyway. Steve was already climbing the steps to the porch, so much for the protective male. She went after him, wincing as another strong gust rocked her back on her heels.
We’re behaving like characters in a cheap horror movie, she thought dismally, staying when we know we should go, poking where we have no business poking.
True enough, she supposed . . . except wasn’t that what people did? Wasn’t that why, when Richie Judkins had come home in a really badass ear-ripping mood, Little Miss Cynthia had still been there?
Wasn’t that what most of the bad stuff in the world was about, staying when you knew damned well you should go, pushing on when you knew you should cut and run? Wasn’t that, in the last analysis, why so many people liked cheap horror movies? Because they recognized the scared kids who refused to leave the haunted house even after the murders started as themselves?
Steve was standing on the top step in the howling wind and dust, head hunched down, bandanna flapping.. . and ringing the doorbell. Actually ringing the bell, like he was going to ask the lady of the house if he could come in and explain the advantages of Sprint over AT&T. It was too much for Cynthia.
She pushed rudely past, almost knocking him into the bushes beside the stoop, grabbed the doorknob, and turned it. The door opened. She couldn’t see the bottom half of Steve’s face because of the bandanna, but the look of amazement in his eyes as she followed the opening door into the house was very satisfactory.
“Hey!” she shouted. “Hey, anybody home? FuckingAvon calling, you guys!”
No answer-but there was a strange noise coming from an open doorway ahead to the right. A kind of hissing. She turned to Steve. “Nobody home, see? Now let’s go.”
Instead, he started up the hail toward the sound.
“No!” she whispered fiercely, and grabbed his arm. “No, en-oh, that spells no, enough is enough!”
He shook free without even looking at her-men, goddamn men, such perfect knightly assholes they were- and went on up the hall. “Hello?” he asked as he went.
Just so that anyone intent on killing him would know exactly where to look. Cynthia had every intention of going back outside and getting into the truck. She would wait three minutes by her watch, and if he wasn’t out by then she’d put the truck in gear and drive away, damned if she wouldn’t.
Instead, she followed him up the hail.
“Hello?” He stopped just short of the open doorway- maybe he had some sense left, a little, anyway-and then cautiously poked one eye around the jamb. “Hell-” He stopped. That funny hissing was louder than ever now, a shaky sort of sound, loose, almost like- She looked over his shoulder, not wanting to but not able to help herself. Steven had gone white above his bandanna, and that wasn’t a good sign.
No, not a hissing, not really. A rattling.
It was the dining room. The family had been about to eat what looked like the evening meal-although not this evening’s meal, she saw that right away. There were flies buzzing over the pot roast, and some of the slices were already supporting colonies of maggots. The creamed corn had congealed in its bowl. The gravy was a greasy clot in its boat. Three people were seated at the table: a woman, a man, and a baby in a high chair. The woman was still wearing the full-length apron in which she had cooked the meal. The baby wore a bib which read I’M A BIG Boy NOW. He was slumped sideways behind his tray, on which were several stiff-looking orange slices. He regarded Cynthia with a frozen grin. His face was purple. His eyes bulged from puffy sockets like glass marbles.
His parents were equally puffed. She could see several pairs of holes on the man’s face, small ones, almost hypodermic-sized, one set in the side of his nose.
Several large rattlesnakes were on the table, crawling restlessly among the dishes, shaking their tails. As she looked, the bodice of the woman’s apron bulged. For one moment Cynthia thought the woman was still alive in spite of her purple face and glazed eyes, that she was breathing, and then a triangular snake’s head pushed up through the ruffles, and tiny black buckshot eyes looked across at her.
The snake opened its mouth and hissed. Its tongue danced.
And more of them. Snakes on the floor under the table, crawling over the dead man’s shoes. Snakes beyond them, in the kitchen-she could see a huge one, a diamond-back, slithering along the Formica counter beneath the microwave.
The ones on the floor were coming for them, and coming fast.
Run! she shrieked at herself, and found she couldn’t move-it was as if her shoes had been glued to the
floor. She hated snakes above all creatures; they revolted her in some fundamental sense far below her ability to articulate or understand. And this house was full of them, there could be more behind them, between them and the door- Steve grabbed her and yanked her backward. When he saw she was unable to run, he picked her up and ran with her in his arms, pelting down the hallway and out into the night, carrying her over the threshold and into the dark like a bridegroom in reverse.
“Steve, did you see-”
The door on her side of the truck was still open. He threw her inside, slammed her door, then ran around to his side and got in. He looked through the windshield at the rectangle of light falling through the open door of the ranch-house, then at her. His eyes were huge above the bandanna.
“Sure I saw,” he said. “Every snake in the mother-fucking universe, and all of them coming at us.”
“I couldn’t run. . . snakes, they scare me so bad m sorry.”
“My fault for getting us in there in the first place.” He put the truck in reverse and backed jerkily out of the 21 driveway, swinging around so the truck~ s nose was pointed east, toward the fallen bikes, the flattened piece of fence, and the dancing blinker-light. “We’re getting the fuck back to Highway 50 so fast it’ll make your head spin.” He stared at her with horrified perplexity. “They were there, weren’t they?
I mean, I didn’t just hallucinate em-they were there.”
“Yes. Now just go, Steve, drive.”
He did, going faster now but still not fast enough to be dangerous. She admired his control, especially since he was so obviously rocked back on his heels. At the 21 blinker he turned left and headed north, back the way they had come.