Chapter Five
This smacks of Vitalism but… I can’t deny those results. Repeatable, if you follow the extended lab instructions… teaching the cells to grow? The force that makes the grass run green? Come on. I’m looking at magic here, plain and simple. Somebody bring me my pointy hat and my wand. [Lab Notes, 7/21/03]
“We’re about five miles from the old Air Force base at Wendover. Just across the border into Utah.” Mellowman stood silhouetted against the bare purple light at the mouth of the cave. Inside wasn’t total darkness—a Coleman portable lantern painted a rough circle of yellow on the floor perhaps a dozen yards away. Nilla’s eyes weren’t in great shape, however, and she couldn’t make much out.
“Back during the war,” he went on, “World War II, I think, the airmen used to come up to these caves with girls they picked up in town. The girls didn’t want their daddies seeing what they were doing. It got to be such a popular passtime that they brought in a cement mixer and put down the floor your are currently drooling on. It’s tough to enjoy yourself with stalagmites poking you in the back. Somebody else figured they’d give the place an air of legitimacy by rigging up a jukebox in here, and that’s where the name came from. Jukebox Cave. They had some great parties, my grampa used to tell me. He was one of those guys. I’ve always loved this place. Can’t you feel it, the vibe in here? The feeling, that low-down, that dirty feeling. This is ground zero for getting it on. This is fuck heaven. I brought some girls here myself when I was a young Mormon, back when I used to have ninety-nine sex. You ever had a ninety-nine? You know what that is?”
She didn’t dare answer.
“That’s when you do every last bit of dirtiness you can to the girl, short of squirting up her skirt. No, if you spill it on the ground well that’s not adultery, no ma’am, that’s just the sin of Onan and that has got to be at least one per cent less sinful, now don’t it? And sometimes one per cent is all it takes to get you into Heaven.” Mellowman laughed maniacally. “Shit, there was a time when crap like that actually mattered to me.”
“Are you… going to… rape me?” she asked. It was just a question. Her injuries wouldn’t let her summon up the rage she needed to turn it into an accusation.
Mellowman’s face fell all the same. “Aw, shit,” he said, and scuffed one boot on the floor. “Aw, c’mon, Muffin, you really think I’m like that? Me and Mike, we’re the laid-back type, real gentlemen, the two of us. We don’t pay for pussy, and we don’t beat up women just to get laid, at least not most of the time. Consensual sex is the best kind, we know that.”
He laughed for a moment, the sound banging off the roof of the cave.
“On the other hand, the Termite is probably too far gone to care. And he’s taking the first watch. You have yourself some pleasant dreams, now.”
He strode away, leaving her there in the dark.
She had most of the night to work out what she was going to do next.
She managed to roll over on her side and crawl a bit, just enough to get closer to the lamp. Not actually get into its light. It took her far, far longer than she expected to halve the distance. It took more effort than she thought she had left.
She was screwed, she understood that much implicitly. Whatever Mellowman had in store for her in the morning it wouldn’t be good. Maybe not as bad as having her brains blown out, perhaps not as bad as being buried unable to die. She wouldn’t like it, though, that much she knew.
Mael, she called out with her mind. Mael, help me, she screamed silently, but either the walls of the cave were blocking her telepathy or he just couldn’t hear her at all. There was no response.
She started crawling again. Managed to get far enough that the light played on her face.
She was on her own. Only one thing left to try.
“Hey,” she shouted. At least she tried to shout. What came out sounded more like a wet wheeze. Maybe she’d broken something while crawling. Maybe her body was just done. “Hey, somebody! Termite!”
That was all she could muster. She waited, waited to regain enough strength to wheeze again.
Something moved in the darkness. A flittering, skittish motion. Like the feelers of a cockroach feathering over a dried-up piece of potato chip.
It came again, this time followed by a noise like feet being dragged across rough concrete. Nilla thought she could see a blur of paleness in the distance. Soon enough it resolved into a shape, a humanoid form. It was the Termite.
“Y-y-you sh-sh-sh-ut up,” he said. He rubbed at his nose and his left eye. “J-j-just shut up.” He rubbed his eye again. Then his nose. She could see where he’d got his nickname. In the dark he positively glowed, his skin translucent and shiny under the grime. The splayed and broken brown palisade of his teeth looked like the mouthparts of an insect. With his wrist he smoothed back his hair, which was greasy enough to stay put. “I’ve got my orders.”
“What is he going to do with me?” Nilla asked.
“Sh-shut up, stupid.”
Nilla sucked on her lower lip. Fear was filling her up. Not fear of what was going to happen. Fear that what she tried next wasn’t going to work. If it didn’t—then she was truly out of ideas.
Then his eyes flicked downward. Into the shadows of her cleavage. She knew she still had a chance.
“Just sit and talk with me, please,” she said to him. She needed to bait the hook. “Are you going to hurt me?” she asked. She put what emotion she had left into the words, twisted them. Made them dirty. Like she wanted to be hurt but only in a very special way. Nilla licked her lips. There was no room in her soul for being disgusted with herself. This was just like when she’d eaten the boy on the golf course. Exactly like that. Sheer survival.
“Aw, no, n-no, I c-c-c, I can’t do this,” he whined, his body curling around the negation. He ran both hands over his scalp, tearing at his hair, clawing at his cheeks. He rubbed his nose and his eye again and turned away from her, only to turn around again quickly.
“But I want it so much,” Nilla said. And she did. She made herself want it. Want him to come closer. To touch her.
The Termite blinked his eyes rapidly. He rubbed at his nose, at his left eye. He reached over and grabbed her breast, hard, hard enough to make her gasp in pain.
It was the best she was going to get. She reared up like a snake and sank her teeth deep into the flesh of his arm. She aimed for the vein there and found it without trouble. He screamed, screamed like a stuck pig, screamed for help, for his mother, the pain in him lighting up the cave like neon. He screamed and screamed and reached for something on his belt. Something dangerous. A gun. He screamed and brought up the gun and started firing wildly, more noise, light in huge orange flashes, and still he screamed, and fired, and fired, and fired until his gun went dry.
It didn’t matter. Before he got off his first shot Nilla had already stolen enough from him. Enough life. She banked her energy. Made herself invisible. It felt like it wasn’t going to work but combined with the darkness in the cave, well. None of the shots hit her.
She was already up, up on shaky feet, moving toward the entrance of the cave. Behind her the Termite kept screaming.
At the entrance she found Mellowman. She had hoped she would. He was going to ruin all of her plans, though, by doing one smart thing. He had heard the screams and the gunshots—how could he not—and he looked deeply concerned. But not panicked. Instead of rushing into the cave, guns blazing, he was pushing the gate closed. He already had the key to the padlock out and ready. He was going to do the smart thing, and seal her inside the cave with the Termite.
Had she wasted a moment more on the Termite, had she stopped to take more of his life force, she wouldn’t have made it. She pushed and stumbled and snagged herself badly as she squeezed into the narrow opening left in the gate. Mellowman grunted and she knew by the way he tensed up that he could feel the resistance her body made. He could feel that something was holding the gate open, even if he couldn’t see it.
“Muffin?” he asked. He started to grin. He had grasped immediately the strange particulars of the situation. Crazy girl, probably undead, can make herself invisible. He stepped into the gate, blocking her escape, knowing that if he didn’t stop her at that moment she would probably get away.
Still the Termite screamed.
Nilla thudded against Mellowman’s chest, the coarse weave of his baja shirt rough against her cheek. He smelled like stale smoke. His arms went around her, tentative at first, then closing with sudden conviction, trapping her.
“I’ve got you, Muffin. And I’m never going to let you go,” he said. He wasn’t looking at her but it didn’t matter.
She would have preferred it if he was looking at her. She wanted him to see her. But it didn’t matter.
He was almost a head taller than her. Nilla’s face fit easily into the crook of his neck. Her lips could feel the pulse of his jugular vein—it was right there.
She tore his throat out and drank the blood that poured down over her mouth.
