free 5th chapter: rest stop

TODD

Todd woke and sat up at the same time, whamming his head hard enough to see stars. Then he smelled the smell, felt the bloated, greasy thing under him, and remembered.

That was when he screamed.

What are you doing? said an incredulous voice in his head. Trying to be next? Shut up! Shut up!

Todd tried to reason with it. But there's this dead kid in here, very very dead, and my hand is in the middle of something and I don't want to think about what so please can't we get out of here?

Listen, said the other voice, clear as a bell.

So Todd did, wondering if he was going a little crazy, because he had never heard voices before, and here he was arguing with one. Then he thought about where he was, and decided it was okay to go a little crazy. Especially if it got him the fuck out of Dodge.

He heard something scratching to his left, keys, and quickly felt around for something to fight with. He tried to avoid the corpse, then just dug, desperate. Maybe it was Stench-Man. Maybe someone else, someone who had heard him.

Please let it be someone else, he prayed.

Find a weapon just in case, advised the other voice. He nodded, flailing, feeling, but there were only empty cans and the… other thing.

He found the tire iron.

Holding his breath, he heard something below him. It sounded like a washing machine, or the world's worst chain smoker. Why was it coming from the ground? Did the…

stranger danger

…guy know somehow that he was waiting in here to - to what?

Bash his head in, if you want to live, said the other voice. Todd nodded. That was what he would have to do. The thought was oddly exciting. Provided he lived through it.

Ah, Karyn. I was wrong. Things can always get worse.

He heard the key ram home, and took a deep breath, tire iron at the ready. He would have to swing as soon as he could see what he was swinging at, or he was dead meat…

just like junior, here

…just like junior here.

The trunk popped open. There was no one there. And there was no one there. And, finally, there was no one there. His minds fought over what to do…

swing! swing! he's hiding right below the lip of the trunk!

…but it was the breathing that decided him. No one that sounded like that was going to live long. Maybe someone had shot him. Maybe he'd had a traffic accident, and was lying on the road, bleeding to death. Happy thoughts, all. It took courage, more than Todd thought he had, at this juncture, but he finally just made himself lean over and look.

What's that sound? he wondered, as he sat back down. Oh, it's me. So I guess I was right; he's not going to live long. Because I couldn’t even tell it was the same guy except for the coat. Because his face is coming off. No one that looks like that should be alive, not even guys that killed little boys. It was just too horrible, the most horrible thing in the world.

He was wrong, of course; feeling the thing's mushy hand close around his ankle was much, much worse.

Harvey Lee was having trouble. Trouble breathing, trouble seeing, trouble thinking, trouble moving, trouble trouble trouble. He needed some help, someone friendly to make it all better and help him remember his name. He heard someone, a familiar sound, reached out blindly. Something deeper than his conscious mind made him hold on for dear life. Harvey Lee’s hands knew he was dying, even if he didn't.

When Todd pulled back, Harvey Lee came, too. Everything in his upper half sloshed down inside his skin, like a waterfall. From the waist up was mostly bone and the mush that had been his brain; it weighed almost nothing at all. His legs and ass, strained to bursting with the extra volume, finally did just that, pouring milky tomato soup across the ashpalt.

"L'il hep," he gasped, staring with blind eyes at Todd, who scrambled back into the trunk as far as he could go, dragging Harvey Lee with him. The man's face dripped onto the leg of his jeans like skin off a pudding.

"Li' heh," Harvey Lee slogged, lungs turned to cottage cheese. His eyes leaked back into his skull, leaving empty sockets. It was this that drove Todd over the edge, and he struck Harvey Lee full in the face with the tire iron. It was like hitting a bag of oatmeal; there was no resistance at all, and Harvey Lee's head folded around the tire iron like an oven mitt grasping a cookie sheet.

Todd kicked, and the thing tumbled back onto the parking lot with a wet smack. He was having a bad dream. Bad dream. The way to wake up was to run away as fast as he could, only the other part of him wouldn't let him move. Cold as milk in the cooler, it cut through his terror like a knife.

What could do that to a man? it wondered. If we get out of this trunk, will whatever did that to him do it to us, too?

He sat and whimpered, hugging his knees, smelling the reek of the little boy and wanting it to be a bad dream, knowing it was real, and he had to listen to that other part of his brain if he wanted to live.

Let's take another look, it suggested. Get the lay of the land.

No no no, whimpered Todd, hugging his knees tighter. Please don't make me, please please please don't make me look at it again.

The other voice was not persuaded.

If we stay here, we're going to die, it said. We need to run away from here, and we need to know where to run, so we need to know where ‘here’ is first. And we need to know what happened so it doesn't happen to us.

Thatt made sense. Todd nodded. Made good sense. He shifted forward, but the other wasn't quite ready yet.

Listen first, it said, so Todd listened, and heard trucks, and insects whirring, but no breathing at all.

Todd felt around for anything else that might be useful, trying hard not to look at the naked, blackened thing that had once been someone's son, but it was like not thinking about pink rhinos; he couldn't not look.

That was someone's kid, he thought. He used to play with Lego's, fart in the bathtub, maybe threw a ball around with his dad. And that... monster... took all of that away from him, and everything that his parents looked forward to for him.

What if he was my kid?

He thought about the boy's parents. Knowing would be a terrible thing, but not as bad as not knowing.

I’d want to know, if he were mine.

The tire iron was gory. Todd wiped it off on one of the trash bags and rooted around for anything else that he could find. Trash, all of it. Small articles of clothing, all filthy, crusted with blood. Trash bags full of cans and plastic bottles. The dead boy. Nothing else.

Time to go.

He looked over the edge again, to be sure not to step on what was left of the man. The shirt and pants were the only thing that made it possible to tell it had ever been a man. What hadn't leaked out across the parking lot had flattened almost completely, like a deflated balloon. There was a smell that cut through even the stench of the man's body and the horrors in the trunk, a chemical smell.

When Todd was a kid, he and his buddies used to catch praying mantises in coffee cans in the field behind their houses and feed them grasshoppers, marveling at the way the grasshoppers stayed alive, even with most of their heads devoured. Sometimes they forgot to add grasshoppers and there would be fewer, fatter mantises the next day. The smell inside the coffee can, the smell of concentrated praying mantis - this was like that, only stronger.

He looked around. The lights were off in the parking lot, but he could tell it was the rest area out on the highway. There was a truck about twenty yards away, but no other vehicles. He wondered why it was dark, and why there was only one other vehicle. Whenever he had stopped here, there had never been less than a dozen other cars, plus a few big rigs.

Something's not right, he thought, but what?

Out on the highway, traffic whizzed by. That was comforting, the prospect of rescue only a few dozen yards away. Whatever was wrong, it was localized. He tried to puzzle it out. It was like someone had dumped a big tub of acid on the guy, and he just melted. Acid from where? And were they defending themselves, or was it one of the guy's friends that did it to him?

Another killer. One that drove the truck, maybe. So maybe still here, somewhere. Watching him right now.

Ah…

Tire iron in hand, Todd rolled out of the trunk just like James Bond. Then he beat feet for the highway, watching and listening for pursuit all the way.