Creekers (14 page)

Boredom set in quick.

Undecipherable C&W boomed through the lot each time someone left. Most who left were clearly drunk, harping about the “hot babes.” Many saw fit to urinate between cars before leaving.
If I had a nickel for every redneck I’ve seen piss in public tonight,
Phil reflected,
I could probably fill my gas tank with high-octane.
He tried to divert his thoughts, but every time he did, they kept roving back to himself: the topic of the evening.

Working in Crick City would never earn him a silver star, but at least it was a job and one that fit his college and career goals. So he supposed he should be grateful.
Beats sudsing fenders at Lucky’s Carwash.
Despite Dignazio’s frame at Metro, Phil realized things could be worse—a lot worse. It didn’t even matter that no one here would ever believe he’d been set up. At least he was working, at least he was getting a paycheck for something more fulfilling than punching a clock at the yarn factory. Lots of people these days didn’t have jobs at all.

So what am I moping for?

Like an undertow, then, his thoughts took him back to earlier contemplations. Women. Relationships.
I’ve struck out more times with women than Boog Powell struck out at the plate.
Maybe he’d never taken things seriously enough. Maybe he’d taken things for granted. Human compatibility wasn’t supposed to grow on trees.
It can’t all be me,
he, well, pleaded with himself. To think so was quite a condemnation, wasn’t it?
Shit,
he thought. Two more rednecks staggered out of Sallee’s. They both relieved their beer-strained bladders before piling into a primer-red Chevy pickup and driving off.

What the hell’s wrong with me?
Phil thought.

Vicki had been his only genuine, long-term relationship. He knew that he’d loved her—he’d loved her more than anything.
Only on my terms,
he regretted now, and then his thoughts turned mocking.
Yeah, the woman of my dreams. Only thing she didn’t do for me was change her whole fucking life. What a dick I am.

But why think of this now?
Ancient history.
This was over ten years ago, and here he was doing stakeout in a redneck strip joint parking lot, and all he could think about was some girl he dated through high school and college, and who probably hadn’t thought about him since
Three’s Company
was still on the air.

Get your head together! You haven’t been back in town two days and already you’ve turned into a moron!

Again, he tried to refocus, on his job, on the stakeout. And on Natter. How well had the guy held up over the last decade? Phil had only seen him a few times in his life, and that had been a while back.
Must be uglier than ever now,
he concluded. Natter was an inbred—a Creeker—yet the man, despite his physical deformities, also spoke with great articulation and seemed keenly intelligent. Was Natter’s car here now? And was he himself in Sallee’s this moment? These were things that Phil should’ve considered previously, but he hadn’t. It was getting close to two—closing time; the cars in the lot had begun to clear out.
Christ,
Phil thought.
I should have at least asked Mullins if Natter was still driving the same car…

More locals stumbled out, jabbered, and drove away. “Man, that back room’s somethin’, ain’t it?” one frightfully large redneck remarked, expectorating a plume of tobacco juice.

His companion, even larger, did a rebel yell. “Man, those chicks got me
all
fired up,” he replied. “We’se comin’ back here ever’ night!”

Please don’t,
Phil thought. They were just stoners, not dope dealers. And what had they said? Something about a back room?
I don’t remember any back room,
Phil thought. They must’ve expanded the place—

Then…

Here we go.

Phil jerked alert and raised the tiny pair of binoculars. Only a few vehicles remained in the lot now, a couple of pickups (one of which looked absolutely ancient) and a fully refurbished ‘63 Chrysler Imperial, an eerie dark, dark red.

And next, in the building’s front entry, a figure appeared.
There he is,
Phil realized. There could be no denying the identity.
Faces like that you don’t forget,
and Phil actually gave a quick shiver when he focused the Bushnell’s. Inhumanly tall and thin, Cody Natter stepped out into the lot, dressed in jeans, an embroidered button shirt, and a black sports jacket.
The bastard must spend a fortune on custom-made clothes,
Phil thought. Forty-five-inch inseams weren’t easy to come by at Wal-Mart. Slivers of gray looked like webs of frost in the man’s shoulder-length black hair—of course, all Creekers had black hair—and they all had red eyes too, irises as red as arterial blood, which momentarily glinted now as Phil squinted on through the binoculars. Then a second shiver traipsed up his spine, like a procession of spiders, when he took his first good, hard look at Cody Natter’s face…

It looked runneled, warped; waxpaper skin stretched over a gourd of jutting bone; Phil swore he could actually see veins beneath the thin sheen of skin.

Lips so narrow they scarcely existed formed a mouth like a knife-cut in meat; a sprawl of uneven teeth outcropped from the depressed lower jaw. One big earlobe hung an inch lower than the other, and seemed to depend in a way that reminded Phil of a shucked softshell clam. Several crevices ran across the enlarged brow, deep as gouges made by a wood chisel, and, lastly, the four fingers on each of Cody Natter’s hands each displayed an additional joint.

Christ, what a living wreck,
Phil observed.

A pair of uppity blondes filed past, short skirts, tattoos, and an excess of makeup. Strippers. They each seemed to bid Natter a downcast goodnight, but Natter did not reply. Instead, he stood just outside the entrance as if in perturbed wait.

Who’s he waiting for?

Then another male Creeker came out, limping toward one of the pickups, his forehead so defected it seemed to possess a bolus. And, next—

Phil zoomed in.

Three women made their exit, keeping their heads down as they filed past Cody Natter. They were dressed similar to the blondes: high, racy skirts, glittery blouses so tight across their bosoms Phil was surprised the rhinestone buttons didn’t fly off. They all wore straight, raven black hair shiny as oil, and they all had red eyes…

Creekers,
Phil realized.

The realization carried more weight when he recognized more telltale traits, however slight:

Misshapen heads, uneven limbs, queerly thin lips. Trace veins could be seen running beneath skin so pale it could’ve passed for white Depression glass. One woman walked with an obvious impairment, while another seemed to have two elbows on one arm. Natter stopped the third, speaking to her as her scarlet eyes remained leveled to the ground. During this pause, Phil noticed that her mouth was so tiny it was hardly a mouth at all but something more semblant of a puncture.

They’ve got Creekers working in there,
Phil couldn’t help but deduce.
Creeker girls doing a strip show…
 He couldn’t imagine anything so obscene.

The first two women got into the back of the Chrysler, while the third clopped awkwardly across the lot and got into the dilapidated pickup truck with the second man. The truck pulled out, and was followed by a second pickup, whose tag number Phil had already logged.

What the hell is going on here?
he wondered.

And what was Natter waiting for?

The tall man remained by the entrance, inspecting inch-long nails on his multi-jointed fingers. Then the front door swung open again. A sleek shadow crossed the entry, high heels ticking on cement, and then the shadow materialized in the pallid yellow light, a curvaceous redhead in a skintight black-leather skirt and black-leather bra. Obviously another stripper, but—
Not a Creeker,
Phil knew. She looked flawless, and her tousled red hair shined like spun cinnamon silk in the flashing lights of the large bar sign. The stripper paused, coyly tossed her head, then took Natter’s arm and got into the Chrysler with him.

A moment later they drove away.

But by then Phil was nearly in shock, nearly in tears, and nearly sick to his stomach.

The thought cracked like a stout bone in his head:

My God…

—because he easily recognized the redheaded stripper as Vicki Steele, the only woman he’d ever been in love with in his life.

— | — | —

Seven

 
“Where’s the girl?”
 Jake “The Snake” Rhodes asked the kid with the fucked up head.

“She went on inside. Wants to freshen up a tad—you know how gals can be.”

Yeah, well, she ain’t gonna be fresh for long,
Jake promised himself. He was feeling mean tonight.

The kid grinned; you could count the gaps where his teeth were missing. Jake had parked right behind the kid’s rust bucket pickup, surprised how long it had taken to get out here. Didn’t know the roads went back this far into the hills. The kid drove like a maniac—Jake had barely been able to keep up—and at one point the road narrowed so severely he could hear branches scraping either side of his own pickup, which pissed Jake off more than a little. In these parts, it wasn’t a man’s home that was his castle, it was his truck—in Jake’s case, a midnight-blue GMC full-size with slot-mags and about ten coats of lacquer and the last thing Jake needed was some fucked up rube road fucking up his paint. But he was so hot tonight, he didn’t pay it much mind. One good thing about dealing dust, the money was so good you didn’t worry about your paint job if it got scratched up.
I’ll just buy another paint job,
he concluded, his springs bouncing over the road’s deep ruts.
And I’ll sure as shit take an extra piece out of that Creeker girl’s ass…